Good Science is Good Questions: The Case of the CSES Affective Polarisation Measurement

The comparative study of affective polarisation is currently based on a party dislike-like question fielded by CSES since 1996. Ostensibly this question measures feelings about parties where the relative scores on an 11-point scale provide information about the source and degree of liking and disliking parties. In the last decade, these data have facilitated study of affective polarisation across many countries and elections. Theoretically, the CSES question was not designed to measure affective polarisation: its purpose was to evaluating parties beyond vote choice. This paper argues that the CSES party dislike-like question is not clearly a measure of affective polarisation; and may in fact be fulfilling its original party evaluation role. Using the Czech Republic as a case study this paper presents a latent class analysis of respondents based on their response patterns to the party dislike-like questions across 5 elections. The results reveal that parties are evaluated in terms of ideology (left, right), alienation (disliking all parties) and indifference (refusing to answer the question). Statistical models reveal that left-right self-placement is the strongest correlate.