The Electoral Consequences of Affective Polarization? Negative Voting in the 2020 US Presidential Election

• Author: Frederico Ferreira da Silva,Diego Garzia
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221074633
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2022, Vol. 50(3) 303–311

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221074633

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The Electoral Consequences of Affective

Polarization? Negative Voting in the 2020 US

Presidential Election

Diego Garzia

1

and Frederico Ferreira da Silva

1



Abstract

About one third of American voters cast a vote more “against”than “for”a candidate in the 2020 Presidential election. This

pattern, designated by negative voting, has been initially understood by rational choice scholarship as a product of cognitive

dissonance and/or retrospective evaluations. This article revisits this concept through the affective polarization framework in

the light of the rise of political sectarianism in American society. Based on an original CAWI survey fielded after the 2020

election, our regression analysis demonstrates that the predicted probability of casting a negative vote significantly increases

among individuals for whom out-candidate hate outweighs in-candidate love. Negative voting is less prevalent among partisans

as their higher levels of in-group affection can offset out-group contempt. By asserting the enduring relevance of negative voting

in American presidential elections, we aim at stimulating further research and discussion of its implications for democratic

representation.

Keywords

affective polarization, negative personalization, negative partisanship, political behavior, retrospective voting

Introduction

Not unlike the most recent presidential contests, also the 2020

US Presidential election was characterized by widespread

negativity. This occurrence fits with a theoretical account of

rising politicalsectarianism among American voters, whereby

out-party hate has progressively emerged as a stronger force

than in-party love (Finkel et al., 2020).

A growing body of research has documented an intensi-

fying affective polarization trend among the US electorate

(Abramowitz & Webster, 2016;Boxell et al., 2020;Iyengar

et al., 2012). However, much less is known about the political

and electoral consequences of affective polarization, “as most

studies have focused on the more surprising apolitical rami-

fications”(Iyengar et al., 2019: 139). In this paper, we con-

tribute to filling this gap by revisiting the notion of negative

voting, that is, an electoral choice more strongly driven by

negative attitudes toward opposed parties and candidates than

by positive attitudes toward one’s preferred party and candi-

date. Based on an original post-electoral survey of American

citizens eligible to vote, we find that about one third of voters

cast a negative vote in the 2020 Presidential election.

From a theoretical point of view, we contribute to the

existing literature by advancing a composite model for the study

of negative voting. Our model combines insights from the

classic rational choice literature (i.e., retrospective performance

evaluations and rationalization mechanisms) with the most re-

cent contributions from the socio-psychological literature on

affective polarization.

Our results provide empirical confirmation for the validity

of our composite model. On the one hand, we find that

negative voting is linked to both retrospective performance

evaluations and strength of partisanship. On the other hand,

we highlight the relevance of voters’affection towards parties

and candidates. While despise toward the opposition emerges

as a necessary condition for voting “against,”we also find that

the tendency towards negative voting is compensated by

positive attitudes towards one’s preferred party and candi-

date. Indeed, what seems to really differentiate positive voters

from negative voters does not lie in the extent to which they

dislike the opposition—both type of voters are very negative

towards the “other”candidate. What makes the difference is

whether they like their own candidate enough.

1

University of Lausanne Faculty of Social and Political Science, Lausanne,

Switzerland

Corresponding Author:

Frederico Ferreira da Silva, University of Lausanne Faculty of Social and

Political Science, Quartier Mouline-Geopolis, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.

Email: frederico.silva@unil.ch