Ballot propositions provide a unique instance of direct democracy in which voters have a say in a state’s legislative process. However, voters vary in how they understand and evaluate these measures, many of which can be relatively complicated and comprised of multiple provisions. When multiple provisions exist within a single proposition, how do voters aggregate their potentially varying support across the provisions in their calculus of overall support for the proposition? Are all provisions weighted equally or do some matter more? To examine these questions, we construct novel survey questions on three real ballot measures under consideration during the 2022 midterm election cycle. By randomly assigning how we ask respondents for their support of a given ballot proposition, we garner insight into how voters approach voting on ballot measures and their greater decision-making process. We find evidence of a provision-based negativity bias, which is strongest on the most complex and least polarized issue.

Which levels of religiosity are most associated with terrorism threat perception amid conflict and why? Using three waves of the Israel National Election Study conducted around national elections (2015, 2019, 2022; pooled N = 1,848), we estimate cumulative link models with multi-point religiosity measures to examine nonlinear effects. Results reveal a robust inverted U-shaped relationship: threat perception peaks at intermediate religiosity and declines among both the very religious and the secular. The pattern holds across election cycles and after adjusting for political orientation, gender, education, and age. We interpret these findings through the concept of existential clarity, arguing that coherent religious and secular worldviews provide stable interpretive frameworks that buffer perceived threat, whereas intermediate positions may reflect lower belief-system coherence. By integrating nonlinear modeling with religion–politics theory, the study reconciles inconsistent findings in the literature and clarifies how religiosity structures threat perception in democracies facing sustained insecurity.

American politics scholars have long argued for the centrality of Black group consciousness in political decision-making for African Americans, regardless of class. However, what has not been completely explored is whether there are specific circumstances in which class-based concerns are prioritized for middle-class African Americans over racial group considerations. This paper explores whether the specific circumstance of direct economic threat heightens the relevance of class considerations over racial group considerations for local redistributive policy preferences among Black homeowners. Utilizing a novel survey experiment, I directly pit economic self-interest against racial group solidarity to analyze the prioritized political consideration for affluent Black political decision-making. I argue that the strength of racial group solidarity will extend to African American homeowners foregoing their own economic self-interest, defined as their property value, for the benefit of the overall racial group. Findings support my hypotheses and demonstrate that Black homeowners higher in linked fate are most likely to show the highest levels of support for the redistributive policy when low-income tenants are explicitly described as Black, as compared to the White condition or the control. These findings point to the effects and non-effects of economic self-interest in Black political decision-making depending on the racialized context. Lastly, this inquiry points to the resilience of Black group racial solidarity and its role in the formation of Black policy preferences irrespective of class-based intra- group differences.

Governance principles reflect procedural values that govern the means of implementing public policies. Using survey data from Italy and the United Kingdom, we explore the public’s orientations towards those principles. We model them as instrumental values in belief systems, and as components of a network of attitudes. We find that governance principles largely occupy their own community; their interdependence with each other is far greater than their dependence on any other values or attitudes. Public employment experience neither alters the internal integration of governance principles nor changes their relationship with the larger belief system. We observe low levels of dynamic constraint among governance value orientations and show evidence that higher-order values account for the greatest influence over them. They remain strikingly invariant to simulated shifts in other attitudes, though modestly more constrained in Italy than in the UK. Our results suggest that orientations towards transparency can be most strongly influenced by other beliefs.

Elections are moments when nations confront uncertainty about their future and re-examine their past. The present research investigated how two temporal, group-based emotions jointly shape political preferences and behaviour: collective nostalgia (longing for the group’s past) and collective angst (concern for the group’s future). We focused on the 2024 United States federal election, examining how civic-focused nostalgia (longing for civility and institutional trust) and homogeneity-focused nostalgia (longing for cultural and moral uniformity), together with collective angst, predicted three outcomes: support for strong leadership, voting intentions, and actual voting behaviour. Participants (N = 282) completed measures of these constructs pre-election (Time 1), with voting behaviour assessed post-election (Time 2). Results revealed that both civic- and homogeneity-focused nostalgia were associated with greater general support for strong leadership, but collective angst only predicted such support when civic nostalgia was low. Homogeneity-focused nostalgia robustly predicted Trump voting intentions and behaviour, whereas civic nostalgia predicted support for Harris. Collective angst interacted with homogeneity nostalgia to amplify pro-Trump voting, suggesting that anxiety about the group’s future magnifies the political consequences of longing for a homogeneous past. These findings illuminate how emotional orientations towards the past and future jointly guide democratic decision-making.

Many models of domestic politics in international relations presume that political elites correctly perceive public preferences, even as a growing body of research in political behavior calls this assumption into question. Leveraging seven paired surveys of 4,852 foreign policy elites and 13,687 members of the American public from 2004–24 on twenty-four different questions, we show elites systematically misperceive public opinion in foreign policy, misperceiving the public as more isolationist and inward-looking than it actually is. We replicate this finding with a paired experiment showing that elites effectively underestimate the public’s responsiveness to cues from international organizations, and that elites with isolationist stereotypes underestimate public approval the most. These dynamics – which operate predominantly through stereotyping, rather than projection – have important implications for the study of political elites, public opinion about foreign policy, and efforts to test theoretical models of domestic politics in international relations using public opinion data alone.

Here we introduce the nine research articles assembled in this special issue. Together they explore the implications for foreign policy and international security of the forced deprivation of individuals’ freedom by state or non-state actors for political advantage – what we and our authors call ‘politicised captivity’. Despite its ubiquity, politicised captivity has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention. Although some research explores cases of kidnappings by terrorists, the use of human shields, and hostage diplomacy, there are few studies that engage the political implications of captivity in their full complexity. This is particularly odd given the recent increase in scholarly interest in the role of emotions in international politics. After all, popular emotions permeate captivity, and what we call ‘captivity passions’ have at times influenced national security policies. This volume therefore aims to redress the lack of sustained theoretical and empirical attention to how captivity triggers national emotions and affects international security.

How do institutionalized memories of historical trauma shape contemporary political attitudes? This study examines how emotionally evocative reminders of past violence influence public opinion. Drawing on a survey experiment in South Korea, I test how symbolic narratives of Japanese colonial repression affect emotional responses and downstream political views. The results show that while these reminders evoke strong emotions—especially anger and fear—they do not directly alter attitudes toward national identity or policy. Instead, anger, more than fear, consistently predicts both inclusive orientations, such as increased national pride, and exclusive preferences, including support for protectionist policies. These findings suggest that historical trauma influences political behavior not by providing new information but by activating internalized emotional frameworks. The study contributes to research on the legacy of political violence by identifying discrete emotions as key mechanisms linking collective victimhood to divergent political responses.

Political theorists have developed well‐defined normative understandings of what constitutes ethical political conduct. Based on democratic theory as well as the demands of practical politics, these understandings prescribe certain types of behaviour and proscribe other types. However, it is unclear to what extent this normative framework has resonance for ordinary citizens. This article demonstrates that attention to politics tends to increase the resonance of this normative framework. The analysis identifies three norms about the holding of public office that are expected to structure citizens' ethical judgments: the avoidance of conflicts of interest; conformity with the law or institutional rules; and the maximisation of the public good. The article assesses the importance of these norms in structuring judgments by means of an experiment embedded in a population survey conducted in Great Britain. The analysis finds that informational cues pertaining to conflict‐of‐interest avoidance only condition responses among the attentive, while information pertaining to law conformity has far wider resonance. This finding has implications for approaches to political ethics focusing on normative considerations that appear to have low salience for much of the general public.

This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in‐group is portrayed as being threatened by various out‐groups. By blaming political elites for societal or economic problems harming ordinary people, populist communicators engage in anti‐elitist identity framing. Another strategy is to blame immigrants for social problems – that is, exclusionist identity framing. Finally, right‐wing political actors combine both cues and depict an even more threatening situation of the ordinary people as the in‐group. Based on social identity theory, an experimental study in 15 European countries shows that most notably the anti‐elitist identity frame has the potential to persuade voters. Additionally, relative deprivation makes recipients more susceptible to the mobilising impact of the populist identity frames.

In times of new geopolitical challenges, many states have revived the concept of total defence, in which all citizens contribute to national defence efforts. How authorities communicate the need of this new defence strategy and when such crisis communication leads to an increased defence willingness is an important research question. We hypothesise that individuals who feel a sense of empowerment or an increased risk of war when exposed to crisis communication are more willing to engage in the defence. To evaluate our hypotheses, we collected representative survey data from 2,068 Swedish respondents, at the same time as the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency was distributing a new brochure on expectations on and advice for citizens in case of war. By analysing the responses of individuals who had read or not read the brochure, we gauge the impact of the crisis communication on defence willingness. The results show that individuals experiencing a higher sense of empowerment and perceiving a higher risk of war when having read the booklet were more willing to engage in total defence activities. This has important implications for our understanding of how specific types of crisis communication influence commitment and defence willingness in the population.

Public perceptions of immigration are often inaccurate, yet research lacks conceptual clarity and valid measurement of these misperceptions. Prior work focuses mainly on population innumeracy (misestimating immigrant shares) and cannot distinguish genuine misperceptions from mere guessing. We introduce a survey module that captures multiple dimensions of immigration-related perceptions alongside respondents’ confidence in their estimates. Using population survey data from Switzerland, we develop confidence-weighted indicators that separate misperception from guessing. Although inaccurate perceptions are widespread across several immigration domains, they are less prevalent than often assumed; guessing accounts for a substantial share of observed inaccuracy. This measurement strategy enables more precise empirical tests of theories linking perceptions to political attitudes and behavior.

Who do we blame when bad things happen? Has division in American society made us less sympathetic to victims of tragedies? In previous trying times (e.g., 9/11 and Columbine), Americans rallied together to support victims and seek government solutions. In a highly polarized era, however, we have witnessed further division rather than unity. In this paper, I leverage original, pre-registered survey experiments to examine how much Americans blame and sympathize with someone who has tragically died from COVID-19. The studies find consistent evidence that partisans blame victims who hold an anti-vaccine perspective, regardless of partisanship. Less consistent evidence suggests that Democrats also blame victims who were Republican, but less than they do victims who held anti-vaccination views. Further, partisans are less sympathetic when the victim was anti-vaccine, but Democrats and Republicans are also less sympathetic when the person who died was an outpartisan. These results indicate that animosity towards outpartisans persists even through tragedy, but demonstrates limits to affective partisan polarization paired with evidence of rational blame and sympathy responses.

Political polarization has transcended political arenas, influencing personal decisions. While such biases are often ascribed to out-group animosity, a person’s “party tag” may act as a proxy for other characteristics, overstating partisanship’s role in private life. To explore this, we focus on online dating, using a conjoint experiment with 3,000 UK participants to isolate the effect of partisanship from other traits. Our findings indicate that the influence of partisanship is on par with conventional criteria like physical appearance, yet tolerance for opposing views plays an even stronger role. We also find imporant partisan asymmetries: both groups favour co-partisans, but Labour supporters are twice as likely to do so. Counter-stereotypic profiles reduce bias among Conservatives but heighten it among Labour supporters.

This article describes how and why propaganda affected recipients differently in two distinct situations, namely forced exposure and selective exposure, when they received propaganda during a series of six original survey experiments conducted in China. The prevailing view is that people are more likely to resist information they receive if their exposure to it is forced. But the study addressed in this article found that citizens who prefer not to view propaganda news, when given a choice, actually demonstrate higher average treatment effects on pro-regime attitudes compared to those who willingly read propaganda news (i.e. where participants in the control group were assigned a reading of non-propaganda news). Moreover, this study shows that participants who prefer not to read propaganda news exhibit higher average treatment effects when rating the issue presented in the news as more understandable and important—compared to those who willingly engage with the propaganda. That suggests a possible rationalization pathway in this phenomenon.1

How does anxiety influence voting behaviour? Whereas anxiety is usually treated as a unidimensional emotion, we highlight the multiplicity of socially contingent forms it can assume in response to societal threats. Different anxieties, we posit, can create distinct axes of political competition along which anxious voters exhibit widely varying preferences. We illustrate our argument with unique observational and experimental survey data from Spain’s COVID-19 crisis, showing that individuals anxious about the pandemic’s health consequences favoured parties advocating stringent lockdown restrictions, whereas individuals anxious about its economic disruption preferred parties opposing such measures. Analyzing municipality-level results from Madrid’s 2021 regional election, we additionally provide evidence that COVID-19 boosted support for pro-lockdown parties in areas more exposed to its health effects and support for anti-lockdown parties in areas more exposed to its economic impact. Our findings point to the importance of disaggregating complex emotional states for understanding the determinants of voting behaviour.

Emotions and their sociopolitical impact have received increasing scholarly attention. However, it remains largely unclear whether emotional expression within surveys is subject to social desirability bias. By drawing on impression management theory and the disclosure decision model, I argue that emotional expression is likely prone to social desirability bias in interviewer-administered survey modes and test my hypotheses on mixed-mode ANES data. The findings demonstrate that respondents significantly underreport negative emotions—anger and fear—when interviewed face-to-face as compared to online. Furthermore, positive emotions, such as hope and pride, are not exempt from biased reporting related to interview mode. These results highlight the risks of estimating emotions and their salience by either relying on interviewer administration or combining survey modes.