Politicians who hurl insults get cable news fame but pass fewer laws

Study published in PNAS Nexus by researchers from University of Notre Dame, University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth College through the Polarization Research Lab.

Somewhere around the 118th Congress, a retired member offered a blunt diagnosis of the institution's newer arrivals. They don't care about policy, the veteran legislator said. They care about getting attention.

A team of political scientists decided to test that claim with data — 2.2 million public statements' worth of data, to be precise. What they found confirms the retired lawmaker's instinct and adds a troubling wrinkle: the attention-seeking works, but only in one narrow dimension. And that dimension has nothing to do with governing.

2.2 million statements, one pattern

The study, published in PNAS Nexus, was co-authored by Marc Jacob of the University of Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs, Yphtach Lelkes of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sean J. Westwood of Dartmouth College. The trio drew from the Polarization Research Lab, a multi-university initiative studying political division, and built a dataset spanning every public statement made by members of the 118th U.S. Congress — floor speeches, press releases, newsletters, social media posts — from January 2023 through January 2025.

Using a large language model, they classified each statement as either legitimate policy debate or a personal attack on a colleague's integrity, morality, or intellect. The distinction matters. Disagreeing about tax policy is normal democratic friction. Calling a colleague corrupt or stupid is something else entirely. The researchers wanted to know: what does that something else actually buy you?

The 5-percent shortcut to cable news

The answer is airtime. A legislator who devotes just 5 percent of their communications to personal attacks receives roughly the same cable news coverage as a colleague spending 45 percent of their time on substantive policy debate. Put differently, a small investment in hostility yields the same media return as a massive investment in substance.

The disparity scales. The 25 most combative members of Congress collectively receive more cable news attention than the 75 least combative members combined. On social media, posts containing personal insults are shared an average of 606 times, compared to 244 reposts for policy-focused content. The media economy, in short, prices conflict at a steep premium.

But here is where the data gets uncomfortable for anyone who assumes this strategy produces broader political rewards. Jacob and his colleagues checked fundraising totals, vote margins, legislative output, committee assignments, and personal wealth. On every measure, the correlation between personal attacks and traditional political success was effectively zero.

The conflict entrepreneur pays a legislative price

The researchers introduce a term for this archetype: the conflict entrepreneur, a legislator whose public communications are disproportionately built around character attacks rather than policy positions. These members aren't just loud. They behave differently in ways that show up in the legislative record.

Conflict entrepreneurs co-sponsor fewer bills. They receive fewer assignments to prestigious standing committees. And the more time they spend attacking colleagues, the less time they spend discussing policy at all. The trade-off appears to be structural, not incidental — media celebrity comes at the cost of institutional influence.

"These findings suggest that politicians are using the attacks as a strategy to become part of the national political debate without relying on conventional means of legislative work and policymaking," Jacob said.

Republicans attack 2.7 times more often, but it's not about ideology

The study found an asymmetry between parties. Republican members of Congress used personal attacks 2.7 times more frequently than Democrats. The House of Representatives produced 1.3 times more personal attacks than the Senate. But the researchers caution against reading this as a simple story about partisan ideology.

One of the study's more counterintuitive findings is that a legislator's use of personal insults shows no correlation with the baseline partisan animosity of their district. Many of the most abrasive members represent comparatively moderate constituencies. The behavior appears to be an individual strategy, not a reflection of constituent demand. Voters in these districts are not unusually hostile; their representatives simply are.

This undercuts a common defense of incivility — the idea that combative politicians are merely channeling the anger of their voters. The data suggests the opposite. A small cohort of elected officials has identified media visibility as a career goal distinct from reelection, policy influence, or institutional power, and personal attacks are their most efficient tool for achieving it.

A media economy that rewards the wrong thing

The researchers frame their conclusion around incentive structures. Cable news networks and social media platforms amplify conflict because conflict generates engagement. That amplification, in turn, teaches ambitious politicians that insults are the cheapest path to national relevance. The cycle is self-reinforcing.

"Most of the communications made by legislators are focused on policy," Jacob said. "But it is fair to say there is an overemphasis by the media, which unduly covers legislators who attack others. This attention incentivizes people to engage in incivility if the only way to break through is with insults."

The study does not model what would happen if the incentive structure changed, and the authors acknowledge that media business models are notoriously resistant to reform. Still, they argue that party leadership and editorial gatekeepers hold meaningful leverage. Rewarding legislative productivity over theatrical hostility is, at least in principle, a choice.

What the study cannot tell us

Several limitations deserve mention. The dataset covers a single Congress — the 118th — so it captures a snapshot rather than a trend line. The classification of statements relies on a large language model, which, while validated by the researchers, introduces the possibility of systematic misclassification. And while the study persuasively demonstrates that personal attacks correlate with media attention, it cannot fully disentangle whether the attacks cause the coverage or whether already-famous legislators are simply more likely to make inflammatory statements.

The study also does not address whether media attention, even if it doesn't translate into fundraising or legislation, might serve as a stepping stone to other forms of political power — a presidential campaign, a cable news contract, a book deal. The conflict entrepreneur's payoff may exist in currencies the researchers didn't measure.

Still, the core finding holds up against scrutiny. Personal attacks are associated with media coverage and nothing else in the traditional political toolkit. For legislators who define success as influence over law, insults are a dead end. For those who define success as fame, they remain the most efficient product on the market.