The Issue Basis of Social Sorting among the American Electorate

• In Event: The Social and Emotional Foundations of Political Divisions

Abstract

Scholars of American political behavior point out that Democrats and Republicans today not only hold ideologically distinct issue positions (ideological/issue sorting) but have also become internally homogeneous in terms of their demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds (social sorting; e.g., Mason and Wronski 2018). Social sorting is an important phenomenon since it is thought to be one of the causes of the affective polarization among the American mass public. However, there is little research on the individual-level characteristics that drive social sorting. This paper addresses this issue through the secondary analyses of existing cross-sectional (American National Election Study) and panel (Youth-Parent Socialization Study) public opinion survey data. The data analyses reveal that politically sophisticated individuals (i.e., those who are likely to know the policy differences between the two parties) and those who are ideologically sorted are more likely to be sorted on several social characteristics, including gender, race/ethnicity, and religiosity. The results of this paper suggest that partisan issue sorting is closely related to (and even precedes) social sorting.

Author

• Ikuma Ogura, Hitotsubashi University