Abstract
Much ink has been spilled on the transformation of European party systems and the changing modes of interactions between parties and voters in the 21st century, with the recent period of crises widely viewed as a dramatic shift. New party families have emerged while old party affiliation (partisanship) have fizzled away, but is partisanship an outdated concept? A growing set of evidence points to intense, affective divisions in the electorate, and another has long been asserting that voters behave like market-consumers, independent rational agents. These competing interpretations of electoral behaviour are compatible with partisanship research, a modest strand of which has shown that the intensity of party competition, measured as polarisation on the Left-Right, ignites partisan feelings by clarifying the ideological landscape. This presentation will reassess this mechanism by measuring polarisation on alternative dimensions, and conceptualizing partisanship as a negative attitude, a feeling of disdain towards a party as opposed to an endorsement.