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People who identify with one political party really do not like it when members of the other party are in charge. And its not driven by ideology, but by party identification:
That polarization in the electorate is not ideological makes sense because 60 years of research suggests that most Americans do not think about politics ideologically. Instead, we uncover increasingly and deeply sour feelings that partisans now have about the other political party. A consequence of these negative feelings is vanishingly low trust in government when their party is out of power. As a result, public consensus rarely if ever develops on issues, and public opinion fails to nudge policymakers toward compromise.
The use of "feeling thermometers" measure the low opinion each party has of the other:
In November 2011, Jason Reifler had a survey in the field in which he posed a question that survey researchers have been asking for decades. He asked people to place the Republican Party and the Democratic Party on a feeling thermometer that runs from 0 (really hate the group) to 100 (really love the group).
The average score Republicans gave the Democratic Party was just 18 degrees, and the average score Democrats gave the Republican Party was the same, 18 degrees. When Jimmy Carter was president, those average scores for the other party tended to be in the mid-40s. Even as recently as Bill Clinton’s presidency, they were always at least solidly in the upper 30s. To understand the depth of the recent upturn in negative feelings, we should recall that the late Clinton-era readings were taken even as one party was impeaching the president of the other party.
This means that people are more likely to trust the government when they control the presidency:
The authors conclude that this sends signals to elected representatives that they can bear down on ideological positions and not compromise on public policy issues. Thia of course makes government less effective, which leads to lower levels of trust - and so on and so on.
