Individuals and Public Opinion Change: The Liberal Rebound, Continued Partisan Divergence and Affective Partisanship 2016–2020

There have been three striking patterns of public opinion change in the United States since the second half of the 20th century. One is the political cycle of overall trends in liberalism and conservatism that James Stimson has adeptly tracked and summarized with his “public mood” measure. A second has been the stunning partisan divergence in public opinion that occurred as politics became more ideologically partisan beginning in the mid-1970s, and this penetrated strikingly to the level of public opinion by the 1990s. Third, related to this, is the increase in affective partisanship : partisans of one party emotionally disliking the other party and its candidates and supporters. Underlying these aggregate changes have been individuals changing their opinions. Here we ask to what extent did the rise of Donald Trump and his first presidency shake up partisan politics that affected all these trends. This as an open question since Trump, when first elected president in 2016, was not a mainstream Republican conservative, and his positions and policymaking, including in the end his activist government response to COVID-19 might be perceived differently in ways that might upend or accelerate the past patterns of opinion change, the divergence in partisan opinions, the nature of this divergence, and the state of “affective partisanship.” Further, to the extent that past patterns continued or were disrupted, did they occur because people who held particular opinions changed their minds (from liberal to conservative, or vice-versa), in contrast to individuals going from having no opinion to holding attitudes toward issues and the opposing party. We examined these questions using the American National Election Study and the NORC General Social Survey 2016–2020 panel data. What we found, for one, was the expected liberal reversal in aggregate opinion after the election of a Republican president. Second, at the same time, the ongoing partisan divergence in issue opinions had not ended but continued, driven during the 2016–2020 period by Democrats (and usually Independents, even with some Republicans in some cases) moving in a more liberal direction on issues. And third, the long-term increase in affective partisanship was given a further jolt with Trump’s election and presidency, with Republican in particular showing a noticeable increase in partisan animosity. This further short-term increase in affective partisanship is associated with the increases in partisan differences on some issues.