What drives Voter Affective Polarization – Issue Positions or Party Support? Results of a Conjoint Experiment
Articles
Ainė Ramonaitė
Vilnius University image/svg+xml
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1867-1852
Monika Verbalytė
GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences image/svg+xml
Published 2026-06-01
https://doi.org/10.15388/Polit.2026.122.4
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Keywords

affective polarisation
conjoint experiment
political parties
political attitudes

How to Cite

Ramonaitė, Ainė, and Monika Verbalytė. 2026. “What Drives Voter Affective Polarization – Issue Positions or Party Support? Results of a Conjoint Experiment”. Politologija 122 (2): 117-44. https://doi.org/10.15388/Polit.2026.122.4.

Abstract

The article analyzes affective polarization in Lithuania among voters of different parties, aiming to determine what drives their political antagonism: partisanship or specific issue-based attitudes, such as support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, views on same-sex marriage, support for the European Union, evaluations of the Soviet period, and attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines. The study employs a new tool in Lithuanian political science – a conjoint experiment. The results show that in some cases partisanship (specifically, support for the party “Nemuno Aušra”) acts as a factor that divides voters, even when the influence of issue-based factors is eliminated. Supporters of different parties are antagonized by different issue positions; however, on one issue the attitudes of supporters of all examined parties coincide – those who support Ukraine are consistently evaluated much more positively than those who do not.

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