The role of class identity in political orientations

Abstract

For a variety of reasons, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the role of gender, race, and ethnicity and away from social class during recent decades. This paper argues that through class identity’s influence on salient political orientations, social class remains relevant in contemporary American society. Using data from the General Social Survey, I demonstrate net of a host of theoretically important conditions, a significant positive relationship between class identity and conservative political orientations for white respondents, as measured by political party identification and views on particular government spending issues—income gap, social security, and welfare. My analyses also indicate a significant race-class identity interaction effect, with class identity and conservatism remaining independent of each other for black respondents. Moreover, I contend that neither the argument for the increase in class politics nor the argument of the decrease in class politics (both typically based on objective class measures) is applicable to the effect of class identity on political orientations, with my analyses demonstrating a rather stable positive effect for white respondents over time as well a rather consistent independence between class identity and political orientations for black respondents. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for debates on the role of class in contemporary American society and suggest additional directions for research.