Motivated Mobilization: The Role of Emotions in the Processing of Poll Messages

In this article, we show how exposure to favorable messages about one’s preferred party can affect emotional reactions and subsequent political behavioral intentions. Through an online experiment (N = 540) conducted during the 2019 Indian general election, we find that exposure to favorable poll results increases enthusiasm and decreases anger, while both enthusiasm and anger activate behavioral intention for political participation. While the study supports the existing findings which show that partisanship is an important predictor of mobilization for a party and candidate, it uncovers the affective routes through which partisanship operates to shape poll reactions. Integrating the motivated reasoning and discrete emotions’ frameworks, we offer a theoretical framework of motivated mobilization for explaining political engagement in response to poll exposure.

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