New research reveals that UK people believe Harry Potter, Spider-Man, and Gandalf would support their political party.

The University of Southampton study suggests this projection of views onto fictional characters is "fuelling polarisation in politics."

The survey also found that people tend to associate news stories about charitable and corrupt politicians with their own political biases, believing "good" politicians belong to their party and "bad" ones to the opposition.

Dr Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte from the University of Southampton said: "If we see 'villains' as belonging to the other side, then we also tend to associate more and more negative attributes with that group.

"This is not only bad news for polarisation, but also makes us more easily susceptible to misinformation that confirms the existing biases we hold about the voters of certain parties."

The first of two studies involved 3,200 people from the UK and US being asked which party they thought characters from popular franchises would support.

In the UK, they were asked if the characters were more likely to vote Labour or Conservative, with their answers compared with their own political leanings.

The study, published in the journal Political Science Research and Method, found people were 20 per cent more likely to project their own politics onto a hero rather than a villain.

The second study asked 1,600 UK people to read contrasting news stories about a local councillor—one about them donating money to charity, the other about them stealing from a charity.

It revealed that around one in six people inaccurately remembered which party the councillor represented, with a "strong tendency" to see the charitable donor as a member of their own party and the thief as a member of the rival party.

Dr Turnbull-Dugarte said: "People believe heroes are more likely to belong to their group but can accept a proportion might not.

"Respondents were much more consistent when identifying a villain as belonging to the other group."

He said the tendency to see heroes on their side and villains on the other was greater among those with stronger political identities.

He added: "To overcome increasing political division, we need to recognise this tendency to project heroic and villainous traits along partisan lines."