Intersecting Identities: Class and Political Behavior Across Five European Countries

Recent research shows that class continues to matter for political behavior, despite changing labor markets and political landscapes. Yet it is more unclear how individuals understand and act on their class position in times of more diverse and cross-cutting identities. We argue that the relative importance of class is variable and contingent, as class identity may intersect more or less with other (potential) sources of group identity (such as gender or nationality), especially also across contexts. Together, this can mitigate or intensify the class-to-politics link among individuals. In an original comparative survey across five European countries (France, Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, and Switzerland), we aim to explore citizens' social identities via survey experiments in a first step: which factors are central to their perceptions of self, group identity, and society as a whole, and (how) do identities overlap? Subsequently, we relate these findings to respondents' political preferences and behavior to find out how class identity matters for politics today. We will present results from a pre-test in this preliminary version of the project. The results contribute to scholarship on the societal foundations of the mass public's politics more broadly by navigating the (potential) multidimensionality of citizens' identities.