Group cross-pressures and correct voting in American elections

Abstract

Social identities increasingly sort Americans into opposing partisan camps, yet many voters still occupy cross-cutting affiliations that pull them in competing political directions. Existing work shows that cross-pressures shape turnout and participation, but tells us less about how they affect the choices voters make when they do turn out. This article shifts the focus from participation to decision quality. I argue that group cross-pressures undermine voters’ ability to choose the candidate who best reflects their interests. Conflicting signals fragment issue positions, weaken partisan heuristics, and compress perceived differences between candidates, making ‘correct’ voting more difficult. Using ANES data from five presidential elections (2008-2024), I show that cross-pressures impose a substantial penalty on correct voting that is not accounted for by standard predictors such as political knowledge and interest. Because these pressures are rooted in durable social positions, they constitute a structural constraint on electoral choice in the two-party U.S. system. These findings identify cross-pressures as a distinct source of inequality in electoral decision-making and complicate normative accounts of social sorting, suggesting that the same alignment that intensifies partisan polarisation may also facilitate representational quality.

Yara Sleiman

Postdoctoral Fellow

My research is on how democratic participation is shaped by political cross-pressures, situations where voters are subjected to conflicting influences that affect their political preferences.