Divisions in the Big Tent: Group Sentiments and Candidate Preferences within the Democratic Party

Abstract

Work in political psychology has found that the two major political parties are sorted based on individual’s group attachments. This sorting has resulted in the Democratic Party’s electorate and elites being made up of members from various racial, religious, and social groups. Given this heterogeneity, how do social group identities impact voter preferences in the Democratic primary? Based on social identity theory, I hypothesize that an individual’s feelings toward racial or gender groups should be associated with their candidate preference in the primary election, but only when a candidate’s group identities are known. Using the 2018 American National Elections Studies (ANES) pilot and a nationally diverse survey of 2020 Democratic primary voters, I find that the strength of sentiments toward racial or gender identities is associated with candidate preference and this association is conditioned by the ability to link the candidates to racial or gender groups. This paper shows that the effects of group identity extend beyond simply sorting individuals into one of the two major parties and have the potential to create group-based divisions within the “big tent” of the Democratic Party.