Making the other side mad: How out-group distaste benefits less competent candidates

The forthcoming article “Making the other side mad: How out-group distaste benefits less competent candidates” by Joshua A. Strayhorn is summarized by the author below.

This article explores a formal theory of candidate evaluation and selection in a polarized polity, where voters take cues from how an out-group or opposing political party reacts to political events.  If a voter learns that one of their own in-group politicians is particularly disliked by the other side, when does this make the in-group more supportive of that politician?  To make this setting a bit more interesting, I assume that this (as I term it) ‘out-group distaste’ toward politicians can be caused by two factors: either ideological or spatial distance, or that politician’s low valence or competence.  I am interested in characterizing what information along those dimensions voters extract from out-group distaste, and how that varies depending on features of the voter or the political environment.

Using some standard Bayesian updating machinery, I first show that under some conditions, namely when the two groups collectively care enough about spatial preferences relative to competence, the in-group prefers politicians more the more they are disliked by the out-group.  More to the point, when this happens it implies that the in-group will be systematically biased toward low-competence candidates, and is more likely to, e.g., choose them in a primary.  I derive the voter’s beliefs on each dimension to illustrate the exact mechanism, and show that essentially the voter gets their wires crossed: low out-group evaluations arising from any source are interpreted as evidence about ideological preferences, leading the in-group to incorrectly believe the candidate is closer to them on policy.  This provides a mechanism by which voters can become particularly loyal to ‘buffoon’ politicians who especially anger the out-group.

I also explore how the strength of this effect varies.  For example, I show that for voters who lack good direct information about politicians, such as those who do not watch (or mistrust) hard news, this mechanism exerts stronger effects.  I also show that when groups are asymmetric, i.e. when one group places extremely high weight on ideology, while the other has more balanced preferences for both ideology and competence, the first type of group is especially prone to be biased toward low-competence candidates through this mechanism, while the second is not.

I also look at a number of extensions that add more detail to this story, of which I’ll highlight one in particular.  I consider a signaling game between politicians and voters in which politicians can misreport their true ideology and competence parameters (at some cost).  I show that politicians sometimes have incentives to feign incompetence, i.e. to report lower competence than they truly hold.  Playing up the appearance of incompetence can benefit the politician even when doing so partially misleads in-group voters; the benefits of generating higher out-group distaste can outweigh any direct costs.  This provides a way to think about why politicians might lean into and exaggerate the more provocative aspects of their own self-presentation.

About the Author: Joshua A. Strayhorn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Their research “Making the other side mad: How out-group distaste benefits less competent candidates” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.