Negative Partisanship Scale

Abstract

The Negative Partisanship Scale (NPS), developed by Sabrina J. Mayer and Luana Russo (2024), is a psychometrically validated self-report instrument designed to quantify negative party identity (NPI) within contemporary democratic political environments, particularly complex multiparty systems. While classical political psychology historically prioritized positive partisan attachment (the traditional Michigan School model of party identification), contemporary electoral behavior increasingly reveals that citizens are defined not only by the parties they support, but by the parties they intensely reject. Grounded in Social Identity Theory and the literature on affective polarization, the NPS captures five theoretically derived dimensions of political disidentification: rejection of party worldviews, identity-defining disaffiliation (sense of self), emotional schadenfreude regarding electoral defeat, social rejection of partisan outgroup adherents, and enduring opposition based on historical performance. Formatted as a unidimensional, compensatory 5-item psychometric inventory administered across a 7-point Likert scale, the NPS generates a composite mean index reflecting the strength of negative partisanship directed toward any focal political entity. Empirical validation across diverse political landscapes—including rigorous cross-national comparative testing in Germany and Italy—demonstrates exceptional psychometric performance, evidenced by robust internal consistency (Cronbach’s $\alpha ge .87$; McDonald’s $\omega ge .88$), strict cross-national measurement invariance (configural, metric, and scalar), high factor loadings ($> .65$), and superior convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity relative to traditional single-item feeling thermometers and propensity-to-vote (PTV) measures. The scale provides political scientists, social psychologists, and public opinion researchers with a standardized, cross-nationally transportable tool to evaluate outgroup animus, coalition viability, populist realignment, and democratic backsliding.

Keywords

Negative Partisanship Scale, negative party identity, affective polarization, political psychology, Social Identity Theory, multiparty systems, outgroup derogation, psychometric validation, voter behavior, electoral hostility, measurement invariance, political disidentification

Authors

The Negative Partisanship Scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and psychometrically validated by:

• Sabrina J. Mayer, Ph.D. — Professor of Political Science at the University of Bamberg and Senior Researcher at the DeZIM Institute (German Centre for Integration and Migration Research), Berlin, Germany. Her research specializes in political sociology, voting behavior, affective polarization, and the political integration of immigrant populations.
• Luana Russo, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Quantitative Methods in Political Science at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Netherlands. Her scholarly focus encompasses electoral geography, negative partisanship, quantitative methodology, and comparative political behavior across European democracies.

Purpose

For more than six decades, the empirical analysis of electoral behavior was anchored in the conceptual architecture of the Michigan Model of Voting, introduced by Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes in 1960. This paradigm conceived party identification as an enduring, positive psychological bond linking an individual citizen to a favored political party. However, seismic shifts in global political landscapes—marked by party system fragmentation, electoral dealignment, the rise of radical populist parties, and intensifying affective polarization—have exposed the inadequacy of viewing political affiliation through a purely positive lens. In multiparty contexts, citizens frequently hold weak, volatile, or non-existent positive loyalties toward any single party, yet harbor deeply entrenched, crystallized, and durable negative animus toward specific political outgroups.

The primary purpose of the Negative Partisanship Scale is to provide a theoretically grounded, methodologically standardized, and psychometrically reliable operationalization of negative party identity. While existing political science research frequently relied on proxy metrics—such as single-item feeling thermometers (e.g., rating a party on a 0–100 scale), negative placement on 11-point Propensity to Vote (PTV) batteries, or ad-hoc directional dislike questions—these proxies suffer from critical psychometric limitations. Single-item scales fail to isolate an enduring, internalized social identity from transient political dissatisfaction, policy disagreement, or strategic voting calculus. Moreover, feeling thermometers confound substantive rejection with low salience or political indifference.

The NPS was created to systematically address these limitations by treating negative partisanship as a full-fledged social identity characterized by affective, cognitive, and behavioral boundaries. Mayer and Russo designed the scale specifically to function within multiparty electoral systems, where voters must navigate a complex landscape of multiple competing parties, shifting government coalitions, and multidimensional ideological cleavages. Research applications of the NPS span several vital domains:

• Modeling Electoral Choice and Volatility: Demonstrating how negative partisanship acts as a cognitive filter that sets absolute voting boundaries, precluding citizens from ever supporting specific parties regardless of shifting campaign dynamics.
• Investigating Affective Polarization and Democratic Erosion: Quantifying the depth of affective hostility between rival partisan camps, tracking how outgroup animus degrades civic trust, democratic norm adherence, and willingness to accept legitimate election outcomes.
• Analyzing Strategic Voting and Coalition Dynamics: Explaining why voters in multiparty regimes engage in sophisticated tactical voting or punish traditional governing parties when they form alliances with negatively perceived outgroups.
• Evaluating Societal Cleavages and Populism: Measuring the emotional and identity-based repulsion directed toward radical right or radical left political movements, as well as the reciprocal negative identities constructed by populist voters against the established political mainstream.

Psychological Construct

The Negative Partisanship Scale operationalizes Negative Party Identity (NPI) as a multidimensional psychological construct that operates through a unidimensional, compensatory latent structure. Drawing upon extensive expert interviews, theoretical derivation, and cognitive pre-testing, the construct synthesizes five core facets reflecting the full spectrum of psychological disidentification:

1. Rejection of Worldviews (Ideological and Value Incompatibility)

The first facet captures the absolute, non-negotiable rejection of a political party’s overarching ideological philosophy, normative vision, and core moral assumptions. In social-cognitive psychology, political worldviews provide cognitive schemas through which individuals interpret reality, moral imperatives, and social justice. Item 1 (“Because of their worldviews, I could never vote for this party”) gauges an unbridgeable cognitive chasm. This rejection is not a minor policy disagreement regarding taxation rates or regulatory thresholds; it represents a fundamental repudiation of the outgroup’s normative architecture, categorizing the party as representing an unacceptable worldview that violates the citizen’s foundational values.

2. Sense of Self (Identity Definition via Counter-Identification)

Rooted directly in the psychological mechanisms of self-categorization, this facet captures negative identification as an active component of the self-concept. In human self-definition, “who I am” is frequently delineated and protected by clarifying “who I am not.” Item 2 (“It is important to me that I am not one of those that vote for this party”) measures the degree to which an individual’s personal and social self-esteem depends on establishing clear symbolic boundaries against the outgroup. Supporting or associating with the focal party represents an ego-dystonic threat to one’s self-image. Consequently, psychological distancing from the outparty is actively internalized as a proud marker of self-integrity and moral distinctiveness.

3. Emotional Significance (Schadenfreude and Affective Investment)

True social identities are defined not merely by cold cognitive categorization, but by profound emotional investment. Negative party identity involves visceral affective reactions toward the outparty’s fortunes. Item 3 (“I am glad when this party loses an election”) operationalizes intergroup schadenfreude—the malicious pleasure derived from another’s misfortune. In intensely polarized climates, an outparty’s defeat generates psychological utility, vindication, and relief, often eclipsing the joy derived from one’s own preferred party’s electoral gains. This affective dimension drives hostile political participation, motivating citizens to turn out at the ballot box purely to inflict electoral defeat upon the despised political entity.

4. Rejection of Other Adherents (Social Distance and Outgroup Derogation)

Consistent with intergroup relations theory, negative partisanship readily generalizes from abstract party institutions and political elites to ordinary fellow citizens who support that party. Item 4 (“I have nothing in common with people voting for this party”) measures interpersonal social distance and the total perceived absence of shared identity, values, or life experience with outgroup voters. This social rejection forms the bedrock of social affective polarization, spilling over from political debates into everyday social life, including workplace friction, friendship termination, and residential segregation.

5. Longstanding Trend (Crystallized Retrospective Evaluation)

The final facet addresses the temporal stability and historical crystallization of the negative attitude. Negative party identity is not a transient reaction to a recent political scandal or an unpopular campaign gaffe. Item 5 (“I would never vote for this party based on their political performance in the past”) assesses an enduring, retrospectively reinforced commitment to outparty rejection. The voter has observed the party over prolonged political cycles and concluded that its historical record demonstrates chronic failure, bad faith, or systemic harm, solidifying an unyielding barrier against future electoral consideration.

While these five facets represent distinct conceptual entry points into negative partisanship, psychometric analyses indicate that they converge upon a singular latent factor. The NPS treats the construct as compensatory: an intense manifestation of several facets compensates for moderate levels of others, yielding an integrated, cumulative index of negative party identity.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual scaffolding of the Negative Partisanship Scale is anchored in the convergence of two major theoretical traditions: Social Identity Theory (SIT) and the contemporary political psychology of affective polarization.

Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization

Pioneered by Henri Tajfel and John Turner (1979; 1986), Social Identity Theory posits that an individual’s self-concept is substantially derived from perceived membership in relevant social groups. Social categorization automatically triggers cognitive processes that accentuate perceived intragroup similarities (ingroup assimilation) and exaggerate perceived intergroup differences (outgroup contrast). Crucially, while early formulations focused primarily on ingroup favoritism, subsequent developments in Self-Categorization Theory (Turner et al., 1987) demonstrated that social groups are inherently relational. One cannot establish an ingroup without simultaneously defining the relevant outgroup boundaries.

In political arenas, counter-identities (disidentifications) can emerge as primary psychological drivers. When an outgroup is perceived as threatening, morally corrupt, or fundamentally hostile to one’s core values, the negative identity formulated against that outgroup can develop autonomy, exhibiting greater cognitive stability and affective intensity than positive attachment to any single ingroup. Mayer and Russo (2024) synthesize these insights to argue that in modern multiparty democracies, citizens navigate an expanding social matrix where multiple distinct parties compete; under such conditions, defining oneself in opposition to an unacceptable political entity provides an efficient, stabilizing cognitive anchor.

Affective Polarization and Outgroup Derogation

The scale directly engages the empirical literature on affective polarization, advanced prominently by Iyengar, Sood, and Lelkes (2012), as well as Abramowitz and Webster (2016). In two-party systems such as the United States, affective polarization typically manifests as a mirror-image dynamic: strong affection for Democrats naturally corresponds with hostility toward Republicans, and vice versa. However, comparative political psychologists (e.g., Reiljan, 2020; Wagner, 2021; Bankert, 2020) have demonstrated that this binary logic collapses in multiparty settings.

In a multiparty system, an individual voter might feel mild affinity for two or three ideologically proximate parties, total indifference toward several minor parties, and visceral, existential revulsion toward one specific party. Negative partisanship cannot simply be treated as the negative pole of a single bipolar positive partisanship continuum. It represents a standalone, unipolar psychological construct characterized by active outgroup derogation. The NPS is theoretically constructed to capture this unipolar reality, measuring the magnitude of emotional, cognitive, and social boundaries erected against a designated political outgroup.

Validity

The empirical validation of the Negative Partisanship Scale conducted by Mayer and Russo (2024) utilized extensive, nationally representative survey datasets collected across European democracies, most notably Germany (a multi-party system with federal proportional representation) and Italy (a volatile multi-party system characterized by fluid electoral coalitions). The validation process rigorously established construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was demonstrated by confirming that the 5 items load onto a unified latent negative party identity factor. Goodness-of-fit indices across diverse subsamples and target parties consistently surpassed established methodological standards (e.g., Comparative Fit Index $ge .96$, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation $le .06$). The items exhibited homogeneous, high standardized factor loadings ranging from $.68$ to $.89$, confirming that all five operationalized facets reflect the underlying theoretical construct.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity assesses whether the NPS correlates strongly and in the expected theoretical direction with alternative measures targeting related phenomena. Mayer and Russo established convergent validity through substantial, statistically significant correlations with standard political science indicators:

• Feeling Thermometers: The NPS correlated strongly and negatively with party feeling thermometers (typically ranging from $r = -.60$ to $r = -.75$), demonstrating that high scores on the NPS correspond with cold, unfavorable evaluations of the target party.
• Propensity to Vote (PTV): Across multiple party targets, the NPS correlated profoundly and negatively with 11-point PTV measures ($r = -.65$ to $r = -.82$). Individuals scoring high on the NPS overwhelmingly indicated a zero probability of ever voting for the party.
• Direct Party Dislike Scales: The scale correlated highly ($r > .70$) with existing ad-hoc single-item party dislike questions, while successfully accounting for significantly more variance in downstream behavioral indicators.

Discriminant Validity

Crucially, Mayer and Russo established that negative partisanship is distinct from general political alienation, political cynicism, or broad ideological extremism. Using average variance extracted (AVE) versus shared variance criteria (Fornell-Larcker criterion), the NPS clearly differentiated itself from:

• General Political Cynicism / System Distrust: The NPS specifically targets individual political parties rather than democratic institutions as a whole. Citizens can exhibit profound negative partisanship toward an extremist outparty while simultaneously displaying high trust in the democratic system.
• Ideological Distance: While ideological distance (e.g., Euclidean distance on a standard 10-point Left-Right scale) correlates moderately with negative partisanship, the NPS captures substantial independent variance. Voters frequently direct intense negative partisanship toward parties at comparable ideological distances based on historical grievances, symbolic cultural markers, or perceived threats to the self-concept.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The predictive power of the NPS was established by modeling real-world political behaviors and attitudes:

• Electoral Vote Choice: In multinomial logistic regression models, the NPS served as an almost impenetrable barrier to voting. Elevated NPS scores toward a party reduced the probability of voting for that party to virtually zero, even when accounting for candidate evaluations, economic perceptions, and traditional issue congruence.
• Coalition Rejection: High negative partisanship toward a specific party robustly predicted an individual’s refusal to support governing coalitions involving that party, providing an empirical explanation for grassroots backlash against cross-bloc compromise.
• Protest and Boycott Participation: Elevated NPS scores significantly predicted willingness to engage in targeted political consumerism (boycotting businesses linked to outparty donors) and participation in public demonstrations against the focal party.

Reliability

The Negative Partisanship Scale demonstrates outstanding psychometric reliability across diverse empirical contexts, national samples, and party targets. Internal consistency was evaluated utilizing both classical test theory metrics (Cronbach’s alpha, $\alpha$) and modern latent variable reliability metrics (McDonald’s omega, $\omega$).

In the primary validation studies conducted across Germany and Italy:

• Internal Consistency: Cronbach’s $\alpha$ coefficients across various evaluated political parties (spanning mainstream conservative, social democratic, green, liberal, and radical populist parties) ranged consistently between .86 and .92. McDonald’s $\omega$ values similarly ranged from .87 to .93, substantially exceeding the recommended psychometric threshold of $.80$ for basic research and $.90$ for high-stakes individual diagnostics.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations for each of the five items regularly exceeded $.60$, with most falling between $.65$ and $.78$, indicating that each individual item contributes meaningfully and reliably to the composite scale without problematic redundancies.
• Standard Error of Measurement (SEM): Analysis of test information functions (TIF) derived from Item Response Theory (IRT) modeling confirmed that the scale provides high measurement precision (low SEM) across the upper and middle tiers of the negative partisanship latent trait spectrum, where political outgroup animus is most salient.
• Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability): Longitudinal panel assessments demonstrated that negative party identity measured via the NPS possesses remarkable stability over time, yielding test-retest reliability coefficients ($r_{tt}$) exceeding $.75$ across multi-month electoral campaign cycles. This empirical stability confirms that the NPS captures an enduring psychological disposition rather than transient, volatile public moods.

Factor Analysis

To rigorously examine the dimensionality and latent architecture of the Negative Partisanship Scale, Mayer and Russo (2024) conducted extensive Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA) followed by Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) across independent national subsamples.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial EFAs utilizing principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood estimation on pilot datasets yielded an unambiguous, single-factor extraction. Eigenvalue decomposition revealed that the first factor accounted for more than 60% to 70% of the total variance across all tested party evaluations, with the second eigenvalue dropping sharply below $0.6$ (scree test inflection point unambiguously confirmed a one-factor solution). Factor loadings across all five items were uniformly high, ranging from $.68$ to $.88$, demonstrating that the five items reflect a cohesive unidimensional continuum.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

CFA was subsequently executed to test the single-factor measurement model against alternative multidimensional specifications (such as separate cognitive, affective, and behavioral factors). Across samples in Germany and Italy, the unidimensional model demonstrated exemplary fit indices, satisfying all modern psychometric benchmarks:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom Ratio: $\chi^2/df le 2.50$ ($p > .05$ in adequately powered subsets)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.965 – .991$ (threshold $ge .95$)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.950 – .984$ (threshold $ge .95$)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.038 – .058$ with $90%$ confidence intervals strictly below $.07$
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.018 – .032$ (threshold $le .05$)

Cross-National Measurement Invariance

A critical psychometric contribution of Mayer and Russo (2024) is the establishment of measurement invariance across diverse political environments using Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA). The researchers demonstrated three hierarchical levels of invariance between the German and Italian samples:

1. Configural Invariance: The identical five-item one-factor structure held across both nations without parameter constraints (demonstrating structural equivalence).
2. Metric Invariance (Weak Invariance): Factor loadings were constrained to be equal across countries. Model fit did not deteriorate significantly ($Delta text{CFI} < .010, Delta text{RMSEA} < .015$), demonstrating that the scale items manifest with the same psychometric meaning and magnitude across distinct political systems.
3. Scalar Invariance (Strong Invariance): Item intercepts were constrained to equality across national groups, again maintaining excellent fit standards. Scalar invariance is the vital methodological prerequisite enabling scholars to directly and meaningfully compare latent mean scores of negative partisanship across different countries.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Negative Partisanship Scale is a standardized, self-report psychometric inventory designed for administration via online surveys, face-to-face computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI), or self-administered questionnaires.

• Test Type: Standardized self-report psychometric rating scale; compensatory multi-item index.
• Target Population: Eligible voting-age adults (18+), political survey respondents, and participants in experimental political psychology studies.
• Administration Format: Computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI), paper-pencil questionnaires, or telephone interviews (CATI).
• Estimated Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes per evaluated political party.
• Total Number of Items: 5 items per evaluated party.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert rating scale, anchored from 1 (“Completely disagree”) to 7 (“Completely agree”), with 4 representing a neutral midpoint.
• Scoring and Index Computation:
  • In accordance with psychometric validation, the scale behaves as a compensatory measure reflecting a unidimensional construct.
  • All 5 items are positively valenced toward negative partisanship (no reverse scoring is necessary).
  • The individual’s Negative Party Identity Score (NPS Index) is calculated by computing the arithmetic mean across all 5 completed items:
    $$\text{NPS Index} = \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{5} \text{Item}_i}{5}$$
  • Final scores range continuously from 1.00 to 7.00.
• Interpretation Guidelines:
  • 1.00 – 2.50 (Low / Absent Negative Partisanship): Absence of outgroup hostility; high potential electoral openness; target party is viewed as an acceptable political actor or competitor.
  • 2.51 – 4.50 (Moderate / Neutral Negative Partisanship): Skepticism or mild disaffection; lack of active counter-identification; voter remains indifferent or weakly resistant.
  • 4.51 – 5.99 (Elevated Negative Partisanship): Substantive negative party identity; deliberate social and cognitive boundary drawing; outgroup vote is practically excluded.
  • 6.00 – 7.00 (Extreme Negative Partisanship): Deep-seated, existential political enmity; intense affective schadenfreude; complete social and ideological repudiation of the target party and its adherents.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Negative Partisanship Scale was formally published in 2024 (available via online advanced access in late 2023) in the peer-reviewed methodology journal Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology. The original research article by Sabrina J. Mayer and Luana Russo is published under an open-access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Consequently, the scale is in the public domain for academic, non-commercial, and scientific research purposes. Researchers, universities, and polling organizations may administer, adapt, translate, and embed the 5-item scale into surveys free of charge without requiring formal paid licensing or explicit prior written consent from the copyright holders. However, under the provisions of the CC BY 4.0 license, scholarly integrity mandates proper academic attribution and formal bibliographic citation of the original validation paper (Mayer & Russo, 2024).

References

• Abramowitz, A. I., & Webster, S. (2016). The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century. Electoral Studies, 41, 12–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2015.11.001
• Bankert, A. (2020). Negative and positive partisanship in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Political Behavior, 42(4), 1181–1203. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09541-5
• Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E., & Stokes, D. E. (1960). The American Voter. John Wiley & Sons.
• Caruana, N. J., McGregor, R. M., & Stephenson, L. B. (2015). The power of the dark side: Negative partisanship and political behaviour in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 48(4), 771–789. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000842391600008X
• Iyengar, S., Sood, G., & Lelkes, Y. (2012). Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3), 405–431. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfs038
• Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N., & Westwood, S. J. (2019). The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 129–146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-051117-073034
• Mayer, S. J., & Russo, L. (2024). What one is not: A new scale to measure Negative Party Identity in multiparty systems. Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, 58(3), 2887–2906. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-023-01793-7
• Medeiros, M., & Noël, A. (2014). The forgotten side of partisanship: Negative party identification in four Anglo-American democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 47(7), 1022–1046. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414013488560
• Reiljan, A. (2020). ‘Fear and loathing across party lines’ (also) in Europe: Affective polarisation in European party systems. European Journal of Political Research, 59(2), 376–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12351
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.
• Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory. Basil Blackwell.
• Wagner, M. (2021). Affective polarization in multiparty systems. Electoral Studies, 69, 102199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2020.102199

Items of the Scale