UC Davis

A considerable amount of research in American politics focuses on the growing affective polarization between Republicans and Democrats. This dissertation analyzes the role of independents, defined as people who do not affiliate with one of the two major political parties, in affective polarization. These party outsiders are understudied even though represent a plurality of the US electorate. Previous research defines independents who lean towards one of the two major political parties as “hidden partisans” who disdain contentious politics and prefer to keep their political views private (Klar & Krupnikov, 2016). I argue it is necessary to incorporate independents and the concept of multidimensional partisanship (Weisberg, 1980) to accurately measure affective polarization in the US. My research studies three aspects of non-partisanship: 1) do independents who reject identifying with the two major parties have an in-group affect (i.e., positive feelings) for other non-partisans, 2) whether it is possible to inflate in-group affect for independents by priming respondents to think about polarization and inter-party conflict, and 3) how nonpartisans compare to their partisan counterparts in terms of conspiratorial thinking. Using nationally representative survey data over time as well as survey experiments, this dissertation explores aspects of nonpartisans that are overlooked in the study of affective polarization in the US.