How “Us” and “Them” relates to voting behavior—social structure, social identities, and electoral choice

Abstract

The last decades have seen the emergence of a divide pitting the new left against the far right in advanced democracies. We study how this universalism-particularism divide is crystallizing into a full-blown cleavage, complete with structural, political and identity elements. So far, little research exists on the identities that voters themselves perceive as relevant for drawing in- and out-group boundaries along this divide. Based on an original survey from Switzerland, a paradigmatic case of electoral realignment, we show that voter Show more