Intergroup threat and affective polarization in a multi-party system

What explains affective polarization among voters and societal groups? Much of the existing literature focusing on mass political in modern democracies originates US, where studies have shown that, while ideological separation has grown, conflict increasingly reflects social identity divisions rather than policy disagreements, resulting polarization. We focus explaining such a multi-party context. Drawing theory intergroup threat theory, we hypothesize that individuals who perceive an show stronger differentiation increased analyze influence perceived drawing two large-scale representative surveys Sweden (N = 1429 1343). individual-level is related to threats both studies, measuring using distance, negative trait attribution, party like-dislike ratings.