Partisan Communities and Affective Polarization

American communities have become increasingly politically homogenous (Bishop & Cushing, 2008), with affective polarization, a form of animosity between political groups, concurrently on the rise (Iyengar et al., 2019). We hypothesized that individuals living in areas with greater proportions of out-partisans would report lower levels of affective polarization. In Study 1, 2016 American National Election Study respondents (N = 3,378) living in counties with more out-partisans averaged lower levels of party-directed affective polarization, controlling for partisan, policy, and demographic factors. In Study 2 (N = 362 via Prolific), similar analyses revealed that American partisans with more out-partisans in their counties and precincts reported lower levels of social distance from out-party members and greater cross-party contact, but not significantly lower voter-directed affective polarization. Cross-party contact mediated the relationship between the percentage of out-partisans in a community and affective polarization, highlighting the intersection of place and psychology in understanding this societal challenge.