Social group perceptions and party choice

Recent scholarship on public opinion and voting behaviour has seen a rising interest in the influence of perceptions of social groups on attitude formation and vote choice. Work inspired by both reference group theory and social identity theory approaches has documented the importance of voters’ perceptions of and identification with social groups for their political behaviour. Yet, the specific mechanisms behind such effects remain underexplored. In order to illuminate the workings of this group effect, the paper analyses the conditioning role of group perceptions as well as perceived group-party linkages on support for parties at the individual level. Using experiments covering 12 different social groups embedded in a survey of Danish voters, the paper examines the extent to which party sympathy and voting behaviour are influenced by group sympathy, group identification and perceived group deservingness. Further, it examines how any such influences are conditioned by voters’ perceptions of the linkages between groups and parties in the shape of the groups’ perceived voting behaviour and parties’ perceived stances vis-à-vis the groups.