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https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2018/03/22/how-republicans-embraced-identity-politics
SOME Democrats blamed identity politics for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016. Mark Lilla, a historian from Columbia University, suggested in the New York Times that Democratic identity politics “encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group.” But new research suggests that identity politics is not a phenomenon primarily connected to the Democratic Party. Social and cultural identity is more closely tied to partisan support among Republicans.
Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly polarised in terms of their racial, religious and ideological makeup. Blacks, Hispanics and the non-religious have sorted into the Democratic Party, while whites, evangelical Christians, and conservatives have tended to join the Republican Party. Between 1992 and 2016 the percentage of white men registered to vote who identified as Republican rose from 48% to 61% and the share of those who were registered Democrat fell from 44% to 31%, according to the Pew Research Centre.
Lilliana Mason of the University of Maryland and Julie Wronski of the University of Mississippi found that a white, Christian Republican is much more attached to his party than one who doesn’t have these features. A supporter of the more racially and culturally diverse Democratic Party, meanwhile, is more open to different religious or racial members than are supporters of the Republican Party. The link between particular religious or racial markers and intensity of support for the Democratic Party is also weaker. “Put plainly, there exist no black, atheist, liberal Republicans, nor many white, Christian, conservative Democrats who feel close to their groups and identify weakly with their party,” write Ms Mason and Ms Wronski. “Still, Democrats appear to navigate cross-cutting identities within their party more frequently than Republicans.”
The emergence of a belief among Republicans that white Christians are a forgotten, oppressed group has been one result. A survey by the Public Religion Research Institute in February last year found that, among supporters of the Republican party, 43% felt there was a lot of discrimination against whites and 48% thought there was a lot of discrimination against Christians. Only 27% thought there was a lot of discrimination against blacks. (Among Democrats the percentages were 19%, 21% and 82%).