The Polarization of Public Opinion about Competence

The existing literature on polarization has focused predominantly on spatial polarization and partisanship. This paper extends the focus of polarization to the literature on issue ownership, and competence. Using ANES data from 1972 to 2012, we identify a pattern of partisan polarization in competence assessments in parallel with elite polarization in the US and some evidence of increasing competence ratings for US parties as they polarize. Partisan polarization of competence assessments is robust to the inclusion of spatial proximity controls. As an additional test of our expectations and using British Election Study data from 1963 to 2014, we reveal partisan polarization followed by depolarization, consistent with elite-level dynamics in Britain. The implications are important for a) our understanding of the implications of polarization in the US, and of depolarization in the UK, and b) better general understanding of the dynamics of public opinion about competence. 3 Has partisan polarization in the US been coupled with the polarization of public opinion on a more diverse array of opinion measures than spatial attitudes alone? This paper argues that partisan apply to public opinion about competence. We advance three arguments in support of this expectation. The first draws on the literature pointing to the interaction of spatial and valence models of party competition. Political elites may diverge from the median voter because they have a valence advantage, or they may diverge in order to acquire a valence advantage (Fenno 1978; Burden 2004; Bruter et al. 2010; Clark 2014). Both expectations suggest that spatial polarization may be matched by polarization in competence assessments. The second argument draws on policy-seeking motives for political elites (Müller and Strøm 1999). If parties diverge to meet the preferences of their partisans, members and activists, then more polarized positions should lead to more intense partisan evaluations about competence. The third comes from the existing literature on partisan polarization of spatial preferences, which reveals that polarization heightens partisan updating of public opinion This causal direction should also apply to other aspects of public opinion. This paper also simply highlights the need to draw the literature on polarization together with the party competition literature on valence, issue ownership and performance. We examine whether partisans rate their parties for competence with greater intensity under periods of polarization; a concept which reflects components of the concept of ownership, valence and performance, but which does not pretend to directly measure any one of these. …