Running Away from Party: The Heterogeneous Effects of Localistic Appeals

• In Event: Turn! Turn! Turn! Political Communication in Times and Contexts of Change

Abstract

Research in American political behavior has consistently characterized partisanship as a “perceptual screen” (Campbell et al. 1960). More recent work reveals that the rise in partisanship in our current electorate is related to the stronger associations which now exist between partisanship and various social identities such as race, gender and religion (see Mason 2018). The strong polarizing effects produced this “social sorting” of the parties are facilitated by political rhetoric that, due to the forces of nationalization, frame public discourse around highly abstract partisan scripts (Hopkins 2018). In particular, much of America’s political discourse is now framed at a broad national level, often featuring general ideological and/or partisan referents, as opposed to local frames that feature comparatively parochial/particularistic referents. Can framing politics locally, as opposed to in national or ideological terms, lead to a less polarized electorate? We argue that local frames do have this effect and provide two forms of evidence, both observational and experimental, to support this.

First, we examine how place-based identity shapes the way members of Congress (MCs) are evaluated by their constituents. To do this, we use a dataset that measures the amount of local content posted to MC’s Facebook page. Using 2016 and 2018 CCES data, we find that increases in local posts are associated with greater levels of support among contra-partisans as compared to co-partisans and weak partisans as compared to strong partisans.

Second, we investigate experimentally the effects of local frames on policy and candidate evaluation. To do this we field a survey experiment where respondents are exposed to researchers generated Facebook posts pertaining to their MC’s stance on the Affordable Care Act. In the first condition, an ideological justification is given for the MC’s position. In the second condition, their MC justifies their position in terms of what is best for the national government. Finally, in the third condition, the MC uses a local frame which justifies their position on the Affordable Care Act by drawing attention to the policy’s impact on members of “local” community (operationalized here at the respondent’s state). Results show that out-partisans and independents exposed to the local framing condition evaluate their Senator more positively than when exposed to the national and ideological conditions. In terms of persuasion, our results show that independents express significantly more agreement with their Senator’s stance on the ACA when that stance is framed in a local, rather than a national or overtly ideological, way.

Our results constitute a considerable advancement in our collective knowledge of both nationalization and polarization.

Authors

• Richard J. Burke, University of Virginia

• Kal Munis