Partisan-directed polarization without strong partisanship? A study of affective polarization in Argentina and Brazil

Most of what we know about affective polarization comes from evidence from the United States, and, to a lesser extent, other Western countries. However, hostility against supporters of other parties is an equally important but understudied phenomenon in the Global South, where politics is usually much weakly structured across ideological and partisan lines. In this paper, we aim to bridge that gap by studying partisan-directed affective polarization in two Latin American countries: Argentina and Brazil. Using two original surveys fielded in 2023, the paper aims to answer two questions: a) how are perceived threats from different outgroups related to affective polarization in Argentina and Brazil?, and b) to what extent is outgroup threat perception a stronger predictor of affective polarization in these countries than variables such as ideological and policy extremism, partisanship and authoritarian attitudes?