Political Parties and Class Identity

• In Event: The Politics of Inequality in Polarized Contexts

Abstract

The United States is often described as a “classless” society. In recent years, however, class politics in the U.S. has gained increasing attention. Political observers, journalists, and academics have frequently invoked the importance of the working class in discussions surrounding elections and the rise in worker organizing. And research suggests that class shapes the public’s policy attitudes and may be central to an ongoing party realignment.

At the same time, we still know very little about American class identity and even less about how Americans form their class identity. While most scholars define class using traditional metrics like occupation, education, and income, we argue that conceptualizing class as a group identity allows us to have a more complete understanding of what class means for US politics. Building on a large and growing group identity literature, we identify an important path through which class identities are developed and made salient to the public: political parties. Given that parties have the ability to set the political agenda, establish priorities, and frame political issues, it is likely that the amount of attention party organizations give to social class will shape class identity among the public.

Social identities can change or move for a variety of reasons. Although some identities may be thought of as fixed, how individuals identify with a given group is often subjective. The meaning of group identities and the salience or importance of those identities can shift over time depending on various factors and contexts (Egan 2020; Huddy 2001). Importantly, scholars have demonstrated that external groups and organizations can be sources of identity change (Lacombe 2019). For example, Franko and Witko (2023) demonstrate that belonging to a union makes individuals more likely to identify with the working class.

Our study looks to expand on existing research by examining whether political parties play a role in shaping class identity in the US. Traditionally the Democratic Party was viewed as the home of working class voters, but this is very much in flux. In this analysis, we examine state party platforms and gubernatorial state of the state (SOTS) addresses for references to different class groups by different parties. Then, we use a newly developed measure of state macro class identity to assess whether changes in attention to class by state political parties influences the extent to which the public, and partisan subgroups of the public, identify as working class.

This research has implications for how we understand the formation of class identity in the US, as well as the formation of group identities more generally. We emphasize the importance of political parties in shaping how Americans thinks about class and politics, and demonstrate how political framing and agenda setting can alter group identities among the public.

Authors

• William W. Franko, West Virginia University

• Christopher M. Witko, Pennsylvania State University