What is negative partisanship?

How Does Negative Partisanship Work?

Ordinary partisanship is relatively straightforward. A partisan supports, advocates for, or aligns with a particular political party or candidate. They might identify as a Democrat or Republican because they agree with the party's policies, prefer its candidates, or want the party to gain political power.

Negative partisanship reverses the emphasis.

Instead of asking:

How much do I like my party?

The more important question becomes:

How much do I dislike the other party?

A voter experiencing negative partisanship might be disappointed with their own party's candidate but still enthusiastically vote for them because they strongly oppose the alternative. Their vote is motivated less by what they hope their own party will accomplish and more by what they fear might happen if the opposing party takes power.

In other words, you don't necessarily have to love your team. You just have to really want the other team to lose.

How Is Negative Partisanship Different From Regular Partisanship?

The difference comes down to what motivates your political loyalty.

With ordinary partisanship, political participation can be driven primarily by positive attachment. You support your party because you identify with its goals, candidates, policies, or values.

With negative partisanship, opposition becomes the stronger force. You might not feel particularly enthusiastic about your own party, but you perceive the opposing party as significantly worse.

Political scientist Lilliana Mason explains that political parties can function as social identities. People develop psychological connections to political groups, meaning elections aren't always experienced simply as competitions between different policy platforms. They can also feel like competitions between groups of people.

That dynamic can make negative partisanship particularly powerful.

Why Do People Become Negative Partisans?

One reason is that America's political parties increasingly represent different social identities alongside their political differences.

Mason explains that partisan identity has become increasingly connected with other identities, including race, religion, geography, and ideology. When those identities align with political parties, people have more reasons to feel connected to their own political group—and separated from the opposing group.

America's two-party system can reinforce this dynamic. Lee Drutman describes the political system as particularly vulnerable to an us-versus-them mentality because two major parties repeatedly compete against one another in winner-take-all elections. If one side wins power, the other loses it.

That creates an incentive to focus not only on helping your side succeed but also on stopping the opposing side.

Negative Partisanship and Affective Polarization

Negative partisanship is closely connected to another concept called affective polarization.

Affective polarization describes the growing emotional divide between political groups: people feel increasingly positive toward members of their own party and increasingly negative toward members of the opposing party.

Importantly, these emotional divisions can be larger than the actual differences in people's political opinions. Mason notes that Americans often overestimate how ideologically extreme members of the opposing party actually are.

That creates a feedback loop.

People dislike the opposing party, assume its members hold more extreme views, and become increasingly motivated to prevent that group from gaining political power. As those feelings intensify, elections can become less about choosing the candidate you prefer and more about defeating the candidate or group you fear.

Why Does Negative Partisanship Matter?

Negative partisanship can change the nature of democratic competition.

Healthy political disagreement allows people to believe that their ideas are better while recognizing that political opponents have a legitimate right to compete, win elections, and participate in government.

Negative partisanship can make that more difficult when dislike turns into moral condemnation.

Research discussed by Mason examines how partisan hostility can progress from disagreement toward vilification, in which political opponents are seen as morally inferior, and even dehumanization, in which they are viewed as fundamentally different or less worthy than one's own group.

At that point, compromise can feel less like negotiating with fellow citizens and more like surrendering to an enemy.

What Is Negative Partisanship in Simple Terms?

Negative partisanship means being politically motivated by who you are against rather than who you are for.

You may not love your party. You may disagree with its leaders or feel unenthusiastic about its candidates. But if you believe the opposing party is significantly worse—or even dangerous—you may continue supporting your side primarily to keep the other side from winning.

Ordinary partisanship says, “I want my team to win.”

Negative partisanship says, “Whatever happens, their team has to lose.”

That distinction helps explain why political competition can become so intense even when voters aren't particularly enthusiastic about their own political parties.