American politics isn’t a two-team game; it’s actually one big group on the right versus two totally different groups on the left.
April 3, 2026
Original Paper
Who goes with whom: The multidimensional cognitive map of U.S. political coalitions
PsyArXiv · hx97a_v2
AI-generated illustration
The Takeaway
Most people view polarization as a tug-of-war between two equal sides, but voters actually see a single conservative bloc and a split liberal coalition. One liberal side is defined by ideas while the other is defined by shared identity, changing how each side reacts to political attacks.
From the abstract
Polarization debates often presume two sorted “camps” in American politics, yet we lack a map of how citizens perceive the coalitions that constitute these camps—perceptions that structure partisan animus, information processing and vote choice, and political behavior. Across five studies using historical and novel survey data, we inductively discover this cognitive map. Analyses reveal a stable, asymmetric, tripartite structure: a unified conservative coalition alongside a fractured liberal win