Concentration of Power and the Transformation of Political Cleavages: Evidence from American Elections, 2008–2024
Using data from 2008 to 2024, this paper argues that as political power becomes more concentrated, voters increasingly rely on durable social identities rather than socioeconomic status as informational shortcuts, thereby shifting political mobilization from structural economic cleavages to constructed identity-based divisions.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the study of how people vote, political scientists have long looked for the deep currents that pull societies apart. For much of the twentieth century, the most powerful dividing lines were thought to be economic: how much money a person made, what kind of work they did, and how much education they had. These were the structural cleavages, the cracks in society formed by material reality. But in recent decades, a different kind of division has risen to the surface, one based not on a paycheck but on who a person is. This is the realm of identity politics, where race, religion, and national belonging become the primary lenses through which people view the world. The question that drives this new research is why this shift is happening. Is it simply because politicians are shouting louder about culture, or is there a deeper, structural reason why voters are turning to these identity markers to make sense of their choices?
A researcher named Jeremiah Mitoko has proposed a compelling answer rooted in the very architecture of modern government. The core idea is that as political power becomes more concentrated in the hands of national leaders and distant institutions, the way citizens understand politics changes. When a government is local, a voter can often see the results of a policy directly; they can watch a road get paved or a school get built and know exactly who to thank or blame. But when power is centralized and decisions are made on a massive national scale, it becomes nearly impossible for an individual to track every outcome. In this fog of complexity, voters need a shortcut. They need a way to quickly figure out who is on their side and who is not. The study suggests that in this environment, durable social identities like race and religion become the most efficient tools for navigation, replacing the older, more fluid categories of income and class.
To test this theory, Mitoko examined a vast collection of data from American elections spanning sixteen years, from 2008 to 2024. This period covers the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, offering a unique window into how different identities rose to prominence at different times. The researcher analyzed survey responses from more than 104,000 people, looking specifically at whether they voted for the same political party for president, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. This consistency, known as "nationalized voting," is a sign that a voter is thinking in broad, national terms rather than focusing on local issues. The analysis compared how well traditional economic factors, like family income and education level, could predict this behavior against how well identity factors, such as race and religious affiliation, could predict it.
The results were clear and striking. When the data was sorted through, the traditional economic markers proved to be less powerful than the identity markers in explaining why people voted the way they did. While income and education still mattered, they were overshadowed by race and religion. The study found that being a member of a specific racial group or a specific religious community was a much stronger predictor of whether a person would vote consistently for one party across all levels of government. This supports the idea that as politics becomes more national and complex, voters are relying more heavily on these fixed social identities to guide their decisions.
The research also revealed how these identities can shift in importance depending on the political moment. During the elections of 2008 and 2012, when Barack Obama was on the ballot, racial identity became an exceptionally powerful force. The data showed that during these years, a person's race was a massive factor in determining their voting pattern, far more so than in other periods. This suggests that the presence of a Black president activated racial identity as a primary organizing principle for voters. In contrast, during the later years of the study, religious identity, specifically being an evangelical Christian, emerged as a steady and consistent predictor of voting behavior. Evangelical voters were significantly more likely to vote for the same party across all offices, showing that religious affiliation had become a stable pillar of political coalitions.
This pattern held true even when looking beyond the federal level. The study also checked whether these same forces influenced how people voted for state governors. The findings showed that the same identity-based patterns that drove national voting also shaped state-level choices, suggesting that the shift toward identity politics is not just a feature of presidential races but is reshaping the entire American electoral landscape. The research argues that this is not merely a result of politicians using divisive rhetoric, but a structural adaptation. As the government grows larger and harder to monitor, voters naturally gravitate toward the clearest, most visible signals available to them. In a complex system, a shared identity offers a reliable map, telling a voter who belongs to their team and who does not, without requiring them to understand every single policy detail.
Ultimately, the paper suggests that the rise of identity politics is a predictable response to the centralization of power. It is a way for people to make sense of a political world that has become too large to observe directly. The study does not claim that economic concerns have vanished, but it demonstrates that in the current era of nationalized competition, the questions of "who we are" have become more effective at organizing political behavior than the questions of "how much we earn." This transformation means that the foundations of political conflict in America are no longer just about money and jobs, but increasingly about the deep, durable lines of race, religion, and belonging that define the modern electorate.
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