Political Minds of Disabled America: The Importance of Disabled Social Identity in the Political Choices of Disabled Voters

Abstract

Although 1 in 4 Americans experience some form of disability, the roles of disability status and identity strength in the development of political attitudes have long gone overlooked. This project, through the frameworks of the social-relational model of disability and social identity theory, aims to offer insights into the role of disabled social identity in the party affiliation, liberal-conservative ideology, and public policy attitudes of disabled people in the United States. Using data from an online survey, I find that strong disabled social identities are associated with higher rates of affiliation with the Democratic party and more egalitarian policy preferences among disabled Americans. Interestingly, my results also indicate that objective disability status alone does not have strong associations with most dimensions of political attitudes measured here, especially when taking this component of identity strength into account. I discuss the implications of these results, and the centrality of identity found in them, for both practical areas of social movement organizing and party politics and for how we conceptualize disability and identity within the field of political science more broadly