Public Policy Attitudes and Political Polarization in the Netherlands

While the increasing relevance of political polarization for the well-established multi-party democracies of Western Europe is recognized, we still know relatively little about how the different dimensions of polarization interact in this setting. We focus on the question whether policy attitudes contribute to affective polarization beyond the effects of ideological positions, partisanship and perceptions of polarization levels. To study this question, we run a comprehensive survey of public policy attitudes and political polarization on a quota-representative sample of public opinion in South Holland in the Netherlands. The results provide strong evidence that people having divergent policy preferences are much more likely to show affective polarization towards parties and voters, on top of what ideology and party affiliation predict. Conversely, policy priority incongruence does not have the hypothesized association. While, on average, levels of affective polarization in the Netherlands are relatively low, perceptions of big and increasing polarization are widely shared and significantly associated with affect.