Politicians' Bipartisan Appeals to Civility and Partisan Divides: A Field Experiment with U.S. Governors

Existing research on depolarization focuses primarily on grassroots approaches, paying less attention to elected officials' potential to bridge partisan divides. Drawing on theories of elite opinion leadership, we argue that politicians' bipartisan appeals to civility can bridge partisan divides. To test our argument, we collaborated with the U.S. National Governors Association on a field experiment, testing the effects of their "Disagree Better" campaign, comprised of public service announcements in which Democratic and Republican governors encouraged citizens to engage in constructive bipartisan conversations. Leveraging addressable TV advertising technology, we assigned over 8,700 survey respondents to be exposed unobtrusively to the "Disagree Better" campaign for two weeks, followed by a seemingly unrelated survey. We find that treated respondents were more likely to engage in bipartisan behaviors and reported greater openness to conversations with political opponents. However, we find no further effects on attitudinal outcomes, such as partisan animosity and support for bipartisan elite cooperation. Our findings demonstrate that by acting as positive role models, politicians can encourage engagement in bipartisan civic behaviors, even absent broad attitudinal change, highlighting the promise of top-down approaches to reduce polarization.