Social class and party affiliation - once the very fabric of political identity in Britain - are fading into the background, experts have found.
How people view others is now as important, perhaps even more important, than how individuals view themselves when they make their vote choice.
Political identity is now shaped by where people live, their social groups and beliefs.
The study shows people who identify most strongly politically with those who are like them, in terms of their characteristics like gender and ethnicity, were most likely to have voted leave in the Brexit referendum. Those who are instead have political identities based on ideas were more likely to support remain.
Those whose sense of identity is based on belonging to a place were much more likely to aid their community during the pandemic but did not have a clear Brexit support position.
Political identities are shaped by characteristics like sexual identity, ethnicity, gender, and religion; or by ideas like policy preferences and party affiliation.
The study is by Hannah Bunting, from the University of Exeter, and Jennifer Gaskell, Gerry Stoker and Will Jennings from the University of Southampton.
During the online survey participants were asked to indicate which identities are important to them and people on the 'other side' of politics. Researchers used a model to predict the strength of each respondent's level of identification with each political identity based on their responses to each item.
Some identities crystallised more around shared social characteristics, others around shared thinking and some around people's shared sense of place and community.
It was the easiest for respondents to collectively identify with those in their own social class, community, nation, ethnicity, gender and sexual identify.
In different parts of the survey, respondents were asked whether they voted leave or remain in the 2016 referendum and to place themselves on a 0 to 10 scale of how much their behaviour changed during covid-19. The researchers separately found that the identities also predicted which parties respondents were likely to support.
Leave supporters saw both their own and their other side to be comprised of characteristics, whereas remainers see their own group as centred around shared ideas.
Those most likely to support leaving the EU were those who identified most with those with a similar ethnicity, sexual identity, gender, and, to a lesser extent, similar social class and religion. On the other hand, those who identified their out-group as having different ideas were most likely to have voted remain.
