Online Incivility in the 2020 Congressional Elections

• Author: Michael Heseltine,Spencer Dorsey
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129221078863
• Subject Matter: Mini-Symposium: America in the 2020 Elections

Mini-Symposium: America in the 2020 Elections

Political Research Quarterly

2022, Vol. 75(2) 512–526

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129221078863

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Online Incivility in the 2020 Congressional

Elections

Michael Heseltine

1

and Spencer Dorsey

2

Abstract

This paper explores the prevalence and correlates of political incivility among Congressional candidates in the 2020

election cycle, focusing specif‌ically on which types of candidates were most likely to use uncivil language in their online

communications and the self-reinforcing nature of incivility between candidates. Based on a comprehensive analysis of

more than two million tweets sent by major party candidates in the 2020 House and Sen ate races, we conclude that

several individual and electoral factors were inf‌luential in driving candidate incivility. Specif‌ically, Republicans, challengers,

and candidates in less competitive races were more likely to use uncivil rhetoric. Women , racial minorities, and

candidates running in open seat races were less prone to incivility. We also f‌ind that incivility begets incivility, with

candidates whose opponents used higher rates of incivility also being more likely to use incivility themselves. Uncivil

tweets were also found to generate signif‌icantly more likes and retweets, suggesting that incivility is a viable means of

driving engagement for candidates. These results shed light on the factors behind incivility among political elites, as well as

highlight the feedback effects which contribute to a self-reinforcing rise in political incivility.

Keywords

incivility, congress, Twitter, elections, 2020

On the night of 3 November 2020, as votes were being

tallied and winners called in the 2020 Congressional and

Senate races, Madison Cawthorne, Congressman-elect for

North Carolina’s11

th

Congressional district, taunted his

opponents online by tweeting “Cry more, lib.”A week

earlier, both Cawthorne and his opponent, Moe Davis,

engaged in a heated exchange on Twitter, with Davis

calling his opponent a dolt and each referring to the other

as a “simp.”

1

Separately, f‌ive weeks earlier, in reaction to

the much bemoaned f‌irst Presidential debate, Senator Ed

Markey tweeted simply “Donald Trump is racist scum.”

Clearly, not all Congressional candidates felt bound by

standard norms of civility in the 2020 elections, and many

were more than happy to use the immediacy of online

platforms to send out pithy, uncivil soundbites in real

time. Indeed, the 2020 Congressional elections were

concurrently the most online and the most uncivil elec-

tions in the social media era (see Figure 1), both in terms

of the number of tweets sent by candidates and the per-

centage of tweets that used incivility.

This approach ref‌lects a growing trend toward inci-

vility in political communications in recent years (Sydnor

2019), with online platforms being a particularly fertile

breeding ground for uncivil rhetoric (Groshek and Cutino

2016;Oz, Zeng, and Chen 2018), both from the mass

public (Jaidka, Zhou, and Lelkes 2019;Theocharis et al.

2016) and from political elites (Berry and Sobieraj 2013;

Herbst 2010). In particular, the rise of Donald Trump into

the political arena has led to an increased acceptance of

negative and prejudiced rhetoric in the mass public

(Newman et al. 2021;Schaffner 2020), further legiti-

mizing negativity and incivility as acceptable political

tools.

This use and acceptance of incivility has had major

implications for both the day-to-day operations of Con-

gress as well as for wider political discourse. Even in the

contemporary Congress, bipartisan cooperation is still key

for successful and effective lawmaking (Curry and Lee

2020). Yet rising levels of incivility and animosity be-

tween congressional elites continues to sever social ties

1

American University, Washington, DC, USA

2

Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael Heseltine, American University, 1600 Massachusetts Ave.,

Washington, DC 20016-8007, USA.

Email: mh0234a@american.edu