UC Riverside

Democratic theory presumes that individuals will coalesce around shared goals and work collectively to advance the interests of the group. However, scholars have observed a divergence between many Americans’ economic interests and their political attitudes and behavior. I offer identity as a potential explanation for this phenomenon. Research in political science demonstrates the central role of identity to politics, yet we know very little about the extent that Americans form a psychological attachment to their class and how that class identity informs their political attitudes and behavior. We might expect class identity to lead individuals to consider their class when forming political attitudes and increase the likelihood that classes act collectively to advance their economic interests. However, the limited evidence of this in American politics suggests that Americans either do not hold meaningful identities based in class or if they do those identities are not salient to their political behavior. In Chapter 2, I examine the level of Americans’ class identity using an original survey to gauge the extent that respondents have a psychological attachment to their class. I find that many Americans have strong class identities, with the strength of the attachment increasing alongside class position. In Chapter 3, I employ an original vote choice experiment to assess whether class identity informs Americans’ vote choice. I find that class identity influences the vote choice for those in the working class with strong class identities but has little influence on the vote choice of middle and upper class Americans. Finally, in Chapter 4, I examine the extent that Americans rely on identities based in party and race in lieu of their class identity, by further analyzing the results of the vote choice experiment. I find strong evidence that Americans are more likely to rely on their racial and partisan identities to inform their vote choice, rather than their class identity. The findings here indicate that the disjuncture between Americans’ political behavior and their economic interests is in part a function of the limited role of class identity in informing their political attitudes and behavior.