Affective polarization has become a defining feature of twenty-first-century US politics, but we do not know how it relates to citizens’ policy opinions. Answering this question has fundamental implications not only for understanding the political consequences of polarization, but also for understanding how citizens form preferences. Under most political circumstances, this is a difficult question to answer, but the novel coronavirus pandemic allows us to understand how partisan animus contributes to opinion formation. Using a two-wave panel that spans the outbreak of COVID-19, we find a strong association between citizens’ levels of partisan animosity and their attitudes about the pandemic, as well as the actions they take in response to it. This relationship, however, is more muted in areas with severe outbreaks of the disease. Our results make clear that narrowing of issue divides requires not only policy discourse but also addressing affective partisan hostility.

情感两极分化已成为 21 世纪美国政治的一个决定性特征，但我们不知道它与公民的政策意见有何关系。回答这个问题不仅对于理解两极分化的政治后果，而且对于理解公民如何形成偏好具有根本意义。在大多数政治环境下，这是一个难以回答的问题，但新型冠状病毒大流行使我们能够了解党派仇恨如何促成意见形成。使用跨越 COVID-19 爆发的两波小组，我们发现公民的党派仇恨程度与他们对大流行的态度以及他们为应对大流行而采取的行动之间存在很强的关联。然而，在疾病严重爆发的地区，这种关系更加温和。