One of the main aims of political parties and politicians is to obtain support for their policy positions. However, such appeals are often not solely based on dry policy statements. Instead, political elites often tie descriptions of their issue stances to appeals to social groups. These rhetorical strategies could increase support for a policy, as social identities and group attitudes shape political opinion formation and behavior. In this paper, we thus argue that the strategic addition of group appeals can help politicians and parties to increase the popularity of their policy positions. In our study, we investigate the effects of a large set of social group appeals on voters' support for policy positions. Drawing on the existing literature, we expect that the effect of social group appeals crucially depends on the sympathy respondents hold towards a specific group. Thus, respondents who hold positive attitudes towards a specific group should react more positively when a group appeals are added to policy appeals. In contrast, respondents with a negative view of a certain group should react more negatively. We test our expectations with a survey experiment that allows for an in-depth analysis of the effect of positive and negative appeals to a variety of politically relevant groups. Our results indicate that the addition of group appeals substantially influences the evaluations of voters and leads to higher polarization. The findings contribute to our understanding of the effect of social group appeals and provide important implications for political communication and representation.