Blurred boundaries: Exploring political stereotyping in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland

Political stereotypes—beliefs about the attributes of politically defined groups—can deepen polarization by obscuring commonalities among citizens. Yet little is known about their nature outside the United States. Using open-ended survey responses from Brazil, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland (N = 5381), we analyze how citizens describe political adversaries in their own words—focusing on issues, social groups, and traits. Combining deductive and inductive coding, we uncover both cross-national patterns and context-specific dynamics. Our content analysis shows that issue- and trait-based stereotypes dominate, but boundaries between categories are blurred. Respondents often conflate politicians and voters, use group labels to suggest traits or views (and vice versa), and deploy trait language to express moral condemnation. These tendencies vary by country, reflecting salient debates and historical cleavages. Our findings suggest treating political stereotypes as webs of associations that go beyond discrete categories, with implications for the comparative study of stereotypes and polarization.