I introduce the reader to the concept of negative partisanship and its distinction from positive partisanship. I highlight the conceptual distinction between negative and positive partisanship at the example of multi-party systems and independent voters in the United States. I then highlight the conceptual distinction between negative and positive partisanship at the example of multi-party systems and independent voters in the United States.

I create and test three interventions that are meant to dampen negative partisanship without diminishing positive partisanship: the impact of cross-cutting identities, unifying identities, and the role of party leaders.

This chapter demonstrates the political consequences of strong positive and negative partisan identity, including their effect on turnout, vote choice, and various other forms of political participation, among partisans in the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy.

I introduce a multi-item index that captures negative partisan identity. Utilizing this new scale, I demonstrate the magnitude of negative partisan identity among the electorate in the United States and in four European multi-party systems.

I sketch out a few thoughts and suggestions on the complexities and caveats of current research on partisanship as well as possible avenues for future research. I conclude the book with a redeeming assessment of partisanship’s role in democratic societies.

Utilizing data from the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Italy, I examine to what extent positive and negative partisanship promote attitudes that are antithetical to a healthy democratic society, including the support for a ban of political parties as well as the desire to see politicians physically harmed.

Utilizing a sample of US adults and a sample of Swedish partisans, I examine the link between prominent personality traits—including Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation, the Need for Closure, and the Big Five—and strong negative and positive partisanship.

This chapter turns to the dynamics of democratic discontent when it seizes power, focusing on Trump but referencing other cases where relevant. It analyzes the influence of Trumpism on the left and finds a mirror image to the dynamics in Spain, where the rise of left-wing populism provoked a populist backlash among the radical right. In the United States, extreme disgust with Trump’s agenda drove many further to the left, increasing leftist Democratic discontent. The second section analyzes the final months of the Trump presidency, as its response to the Covid-19 crisis faltered and Trumpism degenerated into an arcane morass of conspiracy theories. Using experiments and observational data from the PSAS, the chapter argues that pro-Trump conspiracy theories served as a coping mechanism for his followers. As the Covid-19 crisis ravaged both the lives and livelihoods of America, and as it became increasingly clear that Trump would not be reelected, the anxiety his followers felt, regarding a situation that their loyalty to the populist prevented them from accepting, became intolerable. Conspiracy theories allowed the followers to escape anxiety and embrace resentment by giving them targets for their rage.

In this chapter I ask why people respond negatively to corporate political advocacy. I argue that when people talk about boycotting a company, they are not really talking about their consumer behavior. Rather, calls for and supporting boycotts, especially in online formats, function in large part as a way for people to signal their partisanship to their social networks. In this way, disapproval of corporate advocacy in public serves dual functions of reaffirming someone’s individual partisan identity and also signaling loyalty to an in-group by disapproving of an out-group. I use two sources of evidence in this chapter: a survey with two embedded experiments and social media data on boycotts. The survey and experimental data use the individual as the unit of analysis to test whether disapproval of a company’s political activities is primarily partisan. The Twitter data focuses on what aspects of a tweet make it more likely to gain traction and be retweeted. In both tests, I find strong evidence that partisanship is a strong predictor of disapproving of a company’s political advocacy, as well as taking a public stance against it.

In 1946, the American Political Science Association (APSA) established the Committee on Political Parties, to be led by political scientist E. E. Schattschneider. Four years later, this committee would produce a report with a series of recommendations for American political parties – a report that, in 2020 America, seems, at best, quaint. American parties, the report suggested, needed to do more to distinguish their policy positions and do so with a greater sense of party loyalty. Now, the parties need not go overboard: “It is here not suggested, of course, that the parties should disagree about everything. Parties do not, and need not, take a position on all questions that allow for controversy” (APSA Report 1950, 20). Rather, the parties should offer what the report termed “policy alternatives on matters likely to be of interest to the whole country” (20).