Reference groups and electoral behavior

Abstract Recent scholarship devotes considerable attention to how social identities influence vote choice. However, group sympathies or group affect constitute another, often overlooked subjective component of the relationship between social groups and vote choice. Based on reference group theory and drawing on ANES data as well as recent Danish and Austrian election surveys, we examine how voters’ sympathies with a range of groups are related to party choice across time and space. We find that group sympathies are related to vote choice in all three countries, even when controlling for objective group memberships and social identities. Across time, most relationships are stable or strengthening and comparable in strength to the relationship between group memberships and party choice. The relationship between group sympathies and vote choice is, furthermore, conditioned by perceived linkages between groups and parties. Hence, analyses of the role of social groups in voting also need to include group sympathies to grasp the full influence of social groups.