Identity Formation between Structure and Agency – How 'Us' and 'Them' Relates to Voting Behavior in Contexts of Electoral Realignment

Western Europe is experiencing growing levels of political polarization between parties of the New Left and the Far Right. In many countries, the socio-structural foundations of this divide (class, education, residency) are by now so clear that many interpret this divide as a fully mobilized new electoral cleavage. However, cleavage formation also crucially requires processes of social closure and collective identity-formation: shared group identities are the “glue” of cleavage formation, as they translate grievances into political antagonisms. This translation is far from straightforward, as it depends on both bottom-up and top-down driven processes of group boundary-drawing. Our contribution relies on data from an original online survey fielded in the UK, Germany, France and Switzerland. Respondents have answered questions on their sense of belonging to a series of social groups, electoral preferences and socio-demographics. On this basis, we are able to show – observationally – how structural differences relate to both socio-economically (e.g. class, income) and socio-culturally (e.g. cosmopolitanism, lifestyle) connoted group identities, which divide New Left and Far Right voters. Our findings so far suggest that even though the new conflict is firmly rooted in socio-economic categories, it has predominantly been mobilized in terms of culturally connoted identities. In addition, both cross-national comparison (between early “realigners” France and Switzerland vs. recent “realigners” UK and Germany), as well as experimental priming treatments on the relative saliency of key issues allow us evaluating the extent to which group identities are being shaped by experiences of social closure (structure) and elite messages (agency).