Does a bipartisan image improve citizens' perceptions of Congress and its members? If so, why has partisan polarization presumably increased (and bipartisan cooperation declined) in Congress since the 1970s? To address these questions, we unpack the ―electoral connection‖ by exploring the mass public’s preferences for bipartisanship in Congress via two original survey experiments in which we manipulated characteristics of individual members and Congress as a whole. We find that a bipartisan image improves perceptions of Congress as an institution among citizens across the partisan spectrum. However, there exists heterogeneity by strength of party identification with respect to evaluations of individual members. Independents and weak partisans are more supportive of members that espouse a bipartisan image, whereas strong partisans are less supportive. Hence, people with strong attachments to a political party support the abstract notion of bipartisanship in the aggregate but not when evaluating individual members. This empirical pattern helps us understand why members in safely partisan districts continue to engage in partisan conflict even though partisanship damages the collective reputation of the institution, as well as why members from competitive districts attempt to project a bipartisan image