Who do you Hate? Negative Nomination Candidate Evaluations and Party Divisions

• In Event: Intra-Party Dynamics in the US

Abstract

As political observers sought to understand who was “winning” the Democratic presidential nomination competition for 2020, much attention focused on whom voters supported. Scholars, that is, examined voters’ first and second choices to try to understand the “lanes” of Democratic nomination politics and the divisions that exist within the party. While this approach has obvious value, we ask the opposite question: whom did Democrats oppose for the nomination? Given the importance of shared identity within a party, the positive assessments of candidates does not necessarily indicate the major fractures within the party. Opposition, however, is strong signal of conflict within the shared party identity. Using a combination of panel survey data of Iowa Democrats and elite interviews of leading Democratic activists we show that the patterns of whom Democrats do not want reveals important schisms in the party.

Authors

• Seth E. Masket, University of Denver

• David A. M. Peterson, Iowa State University