… “Partisan identification is bigger than anything the party does,” said Frances Lee, a professor at the University of Maryland who wrote a book on partisan polarization. Rather, it stems from something much more fundamental: people’s idea of who they are.
For American voters, party affiliation is a way to express a bundle of identities.
“It more or less boils down to how you see the conflicts in American society, and which groups you see as representing you,” Ms. Lee said. “That often means race, and religion, and ethnicity — those are the social groups that underlie party identification.” CONT.
Amanda Taub, New York Times