Replication Data for: Beyond Observational Relationships: Evidence from a Ten-country Experiment that Policy Disputes Cause Affective Polarization

While scholars document associations between competing parties’ policy disputes and citizens’ cross-party hostility, i.e., affective polarization, we lack causal comparative evidence of how different types of ideological disagreements shape partisan affective evaluations. We investigate this issue with a priming experiment across 10 western publics, which prompts some respond-ents to answer questions inviting them to discuss debates over either cultural or economic is-sues, versus a control group that receives a non-political prompt. Respondents in the economic and cultural priming conditions express greater distrust of out-partisans, and among respondents who received cultural priming, those who discuss immigration in their open-ended responses express far more distrust towards opponents – an effect driven by right-wing respondents who discussed immigration. These findings provide comparative evidence that economic and cultural debates cause affective polarization, with immigration as a primary cultural driver.