Affective partisan polarization, citizens’ attitudes, and political behavior in Swiss democracy

Abstract There is a concern that citizens with different political positions and party affiliations increasingly dislike each other. We examine this affective polarization, which is often associated with a weakening of democracy, in the context of Switzerland’s multiparty landscape with proportional governmental representation. Evaluating the long-term development of affective polarization in Switzerland with both historical and newly gathered data for 2023, we find an increase between 1999 and 2003 but hardly any change over the last two decades. In a complementary perspective based on voters’ revealed preferences, our analysis of straight- vs. split-ticket voting behavior in national parliamentary elections with continuous data back to 1983 does not support any trend in partisan polarization. We further find that more affectively polarized individuals report, on average, lower satisfaction with democracy but show a higher willingness to participate in politics across a wide range of different forms of political engagement, even when controlling for individuals’ general sympathy toward political parties.