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Primary Submission Category: Place/Communities
Affective Political Polarization and Physical and Mental Health among U.S. Adults
Authors: Spencer Allen,
Presenting Author: Spencer Allen*
Past research has found that certain types of political polarization are linked to worse health outcomes. Among different types of political polarization, less attention has been paid to the role that affective polarization — the strong hatred or dislike that partisans in one party have towards the other — plays in shaping population health outcomes. In this project, I plan to use over 50 years of the General Social Survey to answer three questions. First, how does community political orientation (the partisan lean of a neighborhood) shape individual health? Second, does community political mismatch (living in a community whose political orientation differs from your own) shape individual health separately from the political orientation of one’s neighborhood? Third, have these trends changed over time as political polarization has increased in the U.S.? To answer these questions, I will use GSS’ restricted state and county geocodes to link GSS respondents to election return data from Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections and sociodemographic data from the U.S. Census and the American Community Survey. With these data, I will use longitudinal modeling to analyze and report findings.