Political identity and risk politics: Evidence from a pandemic.

ABSTRACT: The way political identity serves as a foundation for political polarization in the United States permits elites to extend conflict rapidly to new issue areas. Further, the types of cognitive mechanisms and shortcuts used in the politically polarized information environment are similar to some of those used in risk perception. Consequently, political elites may easily create partisan risk positions, largely through politically focused social amplification of risk. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a natural experiment for testing predictions about such risk politics. We asked questions about pandemic-related views, behaviors, and policies at the outset of the pandemic in April 2020 and again in September 2020 via public opinion surveys. Our data and analyses focus primarily on a single state,

SUBMITTER: Raile ED 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12053831 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature