A growing literature has shown that group-based appeals are an increasingly important aspect of political campaigns. The basic assumption is that group identities structure the way people make sense of politics and are essential to voters' relationships with their parties. However, while most studies compare different groups, we still have little knowledge about the consequences of appeals to specific groups, in particular social class. Moreover, observational and experimental studies have so far focused on electoral campaigns and voting outcomes. This study examines how class-based appeals influence voters’ support for and evaluation of policies in a realistic direct democratic setting. Drawing on social identity theory, we explore the effects of group-centered arguments, as well as the mechanisms through which they shape political decision-making among individuals from different social classes.
We develop a survey experiment that tests how class appeals could shift evaluations from individual cost-benefit reasoning toward group-based considerations and shared interests. In a two-wave panel, we study the upcoming Swiss initiative “Initiative für eine Zukunft”, which proposes a 50% tax on inheritances exceeding 50 million Swiss francs. The first wave includes all pre-treatment variables, in particular the respondents’ social class. The second wave includes our survey experiment, where the treatment is the class-based appeal. We are specifically interested in heterogeneous group effects. Finally, we use quantitative text analysis to study the respondents’ own assessment of the decision-making process. The findings contribute to research about the role of class identity in politics as well as research on inequality and redistribution.