Who Do People Blame for Affective Polarization?

Affective polarization---animosity toward out-group partisans compared to copartisans---is central to discussions of the contemporary American political landscape, but the literature has not fully addressed whom people blame for the rise of partisan animosity. We analyze how people judge the relative responsibilities of different entities to affective polarization by leveraging ranking survey questions with bias correction for random responses. On average, people blame politicians the most, then traditional media, social media, interest groups, and lastly, citizens. Strong partisan differences exist in blame for traditional media, with leaning and weak Republicans (not strong Republicans) displaying strong blame attribution towards them compared to other entities. Our findings suggest that a gap between depolarization research and citizen perceptions on root causes of polarization may impact the efficacy of possible interventions, and that more research is needed to understand why anti-press attitudes might not be linear with respect to partisanship.