Harry Potter votes like you: a fictional hero seen as a political ally

People think Harry Potter, Spider-Man and Gandalf will vote in the same way, while Darth Vader, Cruella De Ville and Joffrey Baratheon will vote for rival parties.

A new study from the University of Southampton shows that while they believe that fictional characters admired by people in the UK and the US believe that they share their voting preferences, those who don’t like them vote on the other side.

The paper, “Heroes and Villains: Motivated Predictions of Political Identity,” is published in Political Science Research and Methods.

Researchers also found that one in six people recalls affiliation in news articles of charity or corrupt politicians’ party, despite unrevealed. Again, people thought that “good” politicians came from their party, but the “bad” ones came from the parties they opposed.

Researchers say this political prediction may be driving political polarization.

“If you see a ‘villain’ as belonging to the other side, you tend to associate more and more negative attributes with that group,” says Dr. Stuart Turnbull Dagalte, a research lead at the University of Southampton. “This is not only bad news about polarization, but it makes it easier to be affected by misinformation that confirms the existing bias we hold about voters of certain parties.”

In the first of the two studies, researchers from the University of Southampton and the University of Vienna looked at 3,200 people in the UK and the US. There are 1,600 people from various countries.

In a series of questions, people were introduced to two familiar characters from popular franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and Star Wars.

They were asked what characters thought they were likely to vote for workers or conservatives (UK) or Democrats or Republicans (US). Responses were cross-referenced with information about respondents’ political tendencies and affiliation.

People were 20% more likely to project their politics onto heroes than villains. This effect was equally strong when assigning opposition politics to villains. Also, respondents are 20% more likely to say that the villain will vote against the opposition rather than their own.

In the second survey, around 1,600 UK people showed one of two contrasting news articles about local councillors. One is when councillors donate money to a local charity, and another person was stolen from the charity.

Respondents were then asked several questions about the parties represented by the councillors, that is, the stories they read, including information missing from both stories.

The party represented by the councillors mistakenly “remembered.”

They also did so along partisan lines when people were asked to speculate when they said they didn’t know the information or didn’t recall seeing it.

Dr. Turnbull Dagalte said, “I think the heroes are likely to belong to their group, but they may be able to accept that.

“In a highly polarized context, projection seems more about defining who we are than who we are.”

The tendency to see heroes and the other villain on their side has become greater among those with stronger political identities. Political left-wingers were more likely to do that than those on the right.

Dr. Turnbull Dagarte added, “To overcome the increasing number of political divisions, we need to recognize this tendency to project heroic and villainal characteristics along partisan lines and to recognize that reality is always more complicated and subtle than we believe.”