A Partisan Pandemic: How COVID-19 Was Primed for Polarization

• DOI: 10.1177/00027162221083686
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Politicization

ANNALS, AAPSS, 700, March 2022 55

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221083686

A Partisan

Pandemic: How

COVID-19 Was

Primed for

Polarization

By

AUSTIN HEGLAND,

ANNIE LI ZHANG,

BRIANNA ZICHETTELLA,

and

JOSH PASEK

1083686ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYA PARTISAN PANDEMIC

research-article2022

Americans who affiliate with both major political par-

ties rapidly formed diverging attitudes about the

COVID-19 pandemic. Matters of scientific concern

have elicited partisan reactions in the past, but partisan

divergence of opinion on those issues occurred over

decades rather than months. We review evidence on

factors that led to polarization of previous scientific

issues in an effort to explain why reactions diverged so

quickly this time around. We then use publicly available

survey data to reveal that partisan reactions to the pan-

demic were closely associated with trust in public

health institutions, that the association between parti-

sanship and trust increased over time, and that the

conflation of trust and partisanship appears to largely

explain polarized reactions to COVID-19. We also

investigate the hypothesis that conservative media use

might explain polarization but find that the hypothesis

is not supported by our data.

Keywords: polarization; trust in science; public health;

coronavirus; partisanship

Shortly after the United States reported its

first known COVID-19-related death on

February 29, 2020, the country seemed poised

to come together to address the impending

threat of a global pandemic (Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2020).

On March 13, President Trump declared a

Austin Hegland is a PhD student in the Department of

Communication and Media at the University of

Michigan. His research interests center on the way

individuals engage in politics and civic life through

media, particularly the news media.

Annie Li Zhang is a PhD student in the Department of

Communication and Media at the University of

Michigan. Her research interests focus on how media

influences our understanding of and engagement with

scientific issues.

Brianna Zichettella is a PhD student in the Department

of Communication and Media at the University of

Michigan. Her research focuses on affective polariza-

tion and interparty conflict in U.S. politics.

Correspondence: jpasek@umich.edu

56 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

national public health emergency related to the spreading virus, a move sup-

ported by politicians of both parties. Even then, partisan differences existed

concerning the virus (Deane, Parker, and Gramlich 2021), but these may have

reflected the fact that cases were detected in urban and more Democratic areas

before they spread to more Republican and rural areas (cf. Allcott etal. 2020).

By mid-April, though, Americans’ opinions regarding the pandemic had diverged

not just in terms of general concern, but also in terms of policy preferences—

Republican groups challenged Democratic governors on what they considered

overly broad emergency orders, organizing large protests in Lansing (MI),

Richmond (VA), and St. Paul (MN), which were backed by then-president Trump

(Haberman 2020). By June, 76 percent of Democrats said they usually wore

masks in stores versus only 53 percent of Republicans (Kramer 2020). And what

initially appeared to be a nonpartisan public health issue had morphed into a

highly polarized one, affecting partisans’ attitudes and behaviors, as well as their

support for various preventative measures and policies. Why did responses

toward COVID-19 polarize so quickly? Why did they polarize at all?

To understand what happened, we draw from research on divergence in

Americans’ perceptions of other scientific issues that have entered the policy

domain. In general, explanations for scientific polarization rely on three basic

mechanisms: (1) general differences toward science driven by political elites

(e.g., Brulle, Carmichael, and Jenkins 2012), (2) differences in trust toward pub-

lic health institutions and officials (e.g., Mooney 2005), and (3) differences in the

information that different groups receive about scientific issues (e.g., Feldman

etal. 2012). Solid evidence bolsters each of these claims with respect to issues

like anthropogenic climate change and belief in evolution (Miller, Scott, and

Okamoto 2006). And each type of explanation has also been posited to explain

diverging partisan reactions to the coronavirus pandemic (Deane, Parker, and

Gramlich 2021). In this article, we test how well key expectations from each hold

up in explaining partisan reactions to COVID-19.

General Partisan Differences Driven by Political Elites

Although Americans across political parties agree more than they disagree when it

comes to significant political issues, party elites often have strong, diverging views on

those same issues (Fiorina 2017). For instance, most Americans in both

Josh Pasek is an associate professor of communication & media and political science and core

faculty at the Michigan Institute for Data Science at the University of Michigan. His research

explores how media and psychological processes shape political attitudes, public opinion, and

political behaviors; and methods for social measurement.

NOTE: The authors thank Jamie Druckman, Robin Bayes, Jon Krosnick, and Mashail Malik

for helpful thoughts on drafts of the article. We also profusely thank Chris Jackson, Mallory

Newall, and Frances Barlas at IPSOS and Margaret Talev and Sara Goo at Axios for creating

an excellent dataset, availing it for our use during this project, and answering questions about

the data collection process.