Who goes with whom: The multidimensional cognitive map of U.S. political coalitions

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, guide information processing and vote choice, and shape political behavior. Across four studies using historical and novel survey data, we inductively discover this cognitive map. Our analyses consistently reveal a stable, asymmetric, tripartite structure: a unified conservative coalition alongside a durably fractured liberal wing composed of distinct “Ideological” and “Demographic” coalitions. This structure is organized along two dimensions: a primary ideological dimension capturing the traditional left-right conflict, and a secondary common-fate dimension distinguishing groups perceived to be motivated by tangible, widespread concerns from those motivated by narrower, “special” interests. This perceptual architecture explains the entanglement of social-group stereotypes with partisanship, reconciles rising affective polarization with stable demographic sorting, and identifies concrete limits on persuasion and mobilization.