Does Class-Based Campaigning Work? How Working Class Appeals Attract and Polarize Voters
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6246782 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Robison (0000-0002-7472-2247, Leiden University, Den Haag, Netherlands, corresponding author), Rune Stubager (0000-0002-5473-6799, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark), R J Lawrence (0000-0001-9412-7296, VIVE - The Danish Center for Social Science Research), James Tilley (0000-0002-1878-7628, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 723-752 |
| Publication date | 2021-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Political Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4140 • E-ISSN: 1552-3829 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010414020957684 |
| OpenAlex | W3087582676 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 43 |
| References cited | 77 |
Recent elections have featured various politicians directly appealing to the working class, yet we know little about how citizens react to class appeals from candidates. We investigate this question using survey experiments conducted in the United States and Denmark. We show that symbolic class rhetoric substantially influences candidate evaluations and ultimately polarizes these evaluations across class lines. We also unpack how class appeals work and find that while they increase perceptions of representation among working class voters, they have a more limited effect on perceptions of candidates’ ideological position. Our results help explain how class affects voter decision-making and contribute to broader discussions about the role of political elites in activating social cleavages
Class (philosophy · Ideology · Perception · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Representation (politics · Rhetoric · Social class · Sociology · Work (physics · Working class · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Gender Politics and Representation · Law · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology
Perceived class positions and opinion-based polarisation
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The rise and fall of class voting in Britain, 1885–2024
Risky appeals
Who Do Parties Speak To? Introducing the PSoGA
The Effects of Targeted Campaign Messages on Candidate Evaluations
The uses of party manifestos in France
Winning with equality
Success Denied
Redistribution between people and places
Group identities and party competition
How group appeals shape candidate support
The impact of party appeals on age differences in voting
Endogenous opposition
Aligning working‐class interests and preferences
Who Deserves Representation, and When? Unpacking the Temporal Dynamics of Politicians’ Claims of Representation on Social Media
Still Going Strong? The Social and Political Relevance of Class Identification Over Time in Four Countries
Climate action versus environmental protection? How far-right and environmentalist messengers shape public attitudes towards renewable energy infrastructure in forests
The Electoral Coalition of the Radical Right in Western Europe
How do voters interpret social class appeals? Lessons from open-ended responses
How Much Tailoring is too Much? Voter Backlash on Highly Tailored Campaign Messages
A class of their own
Updating cleavage theory for the twenty-first century
Promising links
The conditional politics of class identity
How Group Appeals Shape Group-Party Linkages in Two Political Systems
Social Group Appeals in Party Rhetoric
Rural but not radical right
Group Appeals of Parties in Times of Economic and Identity Conflicts and Realignment
The Group Appeal Strategy
Beyond Policy
Supply-side dynamics of parties’ group appeals
Closer to the people
Subjective losers of globalization
How Are Social Groups Linked to the Vote? Social Group Perceptions and Party Choice
When Group Appeals Backfire
Detecting Group Mentions in Political Rhetoric A Supervised Learning Approach
A New Dilemma of Social Democracy? The British Labour Party, the White Working Class and Ethnic Minority Representation
Place-based resentment in an egalitarian welfare state
Social Mobility, Self-Selection, and the Persistence of Class Inequality in Electoral Participation
Politicization of redistributive policies and political behavior of the poor in German elections
Do working-class candidates activate class-based voting
The Missing Link
The Rationalizing Voter
The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology
Class Politics and the Radical Right
Platform or Personality?
Political Choice in Britain
White-Collar Government
Students as Experimental Participants
Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote
The Oxford Handbook of Political Science
Who Leads Whom?
The Demobilization of Class Politics in Denmark
Class Attitudes in America
Unequal Democracy
Culture, Class, Distinction
Democracy for Realists
The Politics of Resentment
Unequal Societies
Individualization
Why are there so few working-class people in political office? Evidence from state legislatures
The Generalizability of Survey Experiments
Welcoming Their Hatred
Trends in educational assortative marriage from 1940 to 2003
Class and Party in American Politics
A Rational Theory of the Size of Government
Social Structure and Electoral Behavior in Comparative Perspective
How Conditioning on Posttreatment Variables Can Ruin Your Experiment and What to Do about It
Policy Ideology in European Mass Publics, 1981–2016
Who’s the Party of the People? Economic Populism and the U.S. Public’s Beliefs About Political Parties
Brand Dilution and the Breakdown of Political Parties in Latin America
The “Mill Worker’s Son” Heuristic
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The Depoliticization of Inequality and Redistribution
Issue Frames and Group-Centrism in American Public Opinion
Dominating Cues and the Limits of Elite Influence
The Social Divisions of Politics
Courting Christians
Diversionary Nationalism
Moderate Now, Win Votes Later
Targeted Campaign Appeals and the Value of Ambiguity
How Political Parties Use Group-Based Appeals
Gender Targeting in Political Advertisements
The Strengthening of Partisan Affect
Substance and Symbolism
What You See Is What You Get
Is the Left-Right Scale a Valid Measure of Ideology
A Party of a Different Color? Race, Campaign Communication, and Party Politics
Courting the Women’s Vote
What Goes with Red and Blue? Mapping Partisan and Ideological Associations in the Minds of Voters
The New White Flight
Political parties and social groups
Social Identity, Political Speech, and Electoral Competition
The declining electoral relevance of traditional cleavage groups
The transformation of cleavage politics
Careerists Versus Coal-Miners
The Continued Significance of Class Voting
Rethinking the Comparative Perspective on Class and Representation
Appropriators not Position Takers
Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion
Policy Alienation, Social Alienation and Working-Class Abstention in Britain, 1964–2010
The Role of Social Groups in Political Thinking
Policy Representation, Social Representation and Class Voting in Britain
How Parties Shape Class Politics
The class pictures in citizens' minds
Trump's electoral speeches and his appeal to the American white working class
Social divisions, party positions, and electoral behaviour
The relative weight of character traits in political candidate evaluations
Do humble beginnings help? How politician class roots shape voter evaluations
The Strength of Issues
What Happens When Extremists Win Primaries
Do Voters Dislike Working-Class Candidates? Voter Biases and the Descriptive Underrepresentation of the Working Class
The Declining Political Significance of Social Class
Social Class Differentials in Health and Mortality
Cleavage-based voting behavior in cross-national perspective
| Unique citing works | 43 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8,6 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 43 |