New study reveals how voters use nonpolitical signals to judge candidates

A new study indicates that voters sometimes use a politician’s everyday lifestyle choices, such as their favorite restaurant or the car they drive, to figure out where they stand politically. However, these cultural clues only seem to guide voters when formal political details are missing. The research was published in Public Opinion Quarterly.

Extensive research indicates that citizens often navigate complex elections using mental shortcuts rather than deep political knowledge. For example, a 1994 study found that everyday citizens could make informed voting decisions using simple cues instead of memorizing policy details. This aligns with research covered by PsyPost in 2026, which found that voters rely on basic political labels to infer candidate positions even when detailed policy information is available.

Later research explored what kinds of shortcuts people use in modern elections. A 2018 study showed that Americans hold strong, often exaggerated mental stereotypes about the social backgrounds of each party’s members. Over time, these stereotypes have grown to encompass consumer habits and cultural symbols, a trend scholars call social sorting.

The new study focuses on nonpolitical identity signals. These are everyday objects, hobbies, or traits that have no explicit link to government, but have become associated with specific political parties in the minds of the public. Examples might include drinking a latte versus going hunting, or driving an electric vehicle versus a pickup truck.

Politicians often understand this dynamic and use these cultural signals to their advantage. For instance, a politician might use rural, working-class imagery to connect with voters who might otherwise reject their formal party label.

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The research, led by Levi G. Allen, an assistant professor of political science at Indiana State University, aimed to measure how heavily voters lean on these nonpolitical clues compared to explicit political information. “There is an assumption, at times, that folks are using these non-political identity signals to make political decisions, but we really didn’t have any evidence whether or not that was true,” Allen told PsyPost. “This study fills that gap.”

To investigate this, the research team conducted three distinct online experiments. The first experiment involved 1,000 respondents evaluating five pairs of hypothetical political candidates. Participants saw a wide array of information, including demographics like education and race, alongside party identification and two issue positions. They also saw nonpolitical traits, specifically the car the candidate drove, such as a Subaru or a Ford, and their hobbies, like practicing yoga or being a NASCAR fan.

In this first test, respondents heavily weighed political information, such as party labels and policy stances, when deciding who to vote for. Democrats strongly preferred Democratic candidates who believed global warming was a serious problem, while Republicans favored Republican candidates. Both groups largely ignored the nonpolitical lifestyle clues, suggesting that when voters have access to relevant political details, they do not need to rely on a candidate’s hobbies or vehicle choices to make a decision.

The second experiment used a traditional vignette format with nearly 1,000 different respondents to test what happens when political information is removed. Participants read a short news brief about a hypothetical congressional candidate named George Branner. The researchers randomly varied whether the brief explicitly mentioned his political party and whether he displayed specific lifestyle signals.

The conservative lifestyle signals described the candidate owning a hunting supply store, wearing cowboy boots, driving a Chevy truck, and eating at Chick-fil-A. The liberal lifestyle signals described him owning an organic vegan cafe, grabbing a latte at Starbucks, driving an electric car, and attending an arts festival. Respondents were then asked to rate how likely they were to vote for the candidate on a scale from zero to one hundred.

When the candidate’s political party was left out entirely, voters used the lifestyle clues just as effectively as a party label. A candidate showing conservative habits received a roughly 15-point boost in support from Republican voters compared to a neutral candidate. This was nearly identical to the boost given to a candidate who simply called himself a Republican without any lifestyle clues.

Democratic voters showed a similar pattern, penalizing the conservative-signaling candidate just as much as they penalized the explicitly Republican candidate.

“There were two core findings that really surprised us,” Allen said. “The first is that we found when we presented respondents with a stock Republican candidate, he received the same boost among Republicans — or penalty among Democrats — as a candidate who we gave the non-political identity signals to, but not the partisan identification. In other words, the candidates who identified as a Republican fared as well as the candidates who ate at CFA and wore cowboy boots.”

Interestingly, when a Republican candidate displayed liberal lifestyle habits, the expected partisan boost from Republican voters completely vanished. This indicates that contradictory lifestyle clues can override or suppress the usual advantage of a candidate’s party label, leaving voters conflicted.

“The second is that when these things became cross-cutting, e.g. we had a candidate who identified as a Republican but had liberal identity signals, the results washed out,” the researcher explained. “We aren’t quite sure what is going on there, whether it indicates a type of moderate Republican, or triggers some sort of out-group antipathy, but Democrats responded in kind. Future research will be dedicated to addressing this.”

To better isolate the strongest lifestyle cues, the researchers conducted a pretest to determine which brands and hobbies Americans most strongly associate with each party. They found that a Toyota Prius, Starbucks, and being an NBA fan were viewed as the most Democratic signals, while a Ford F-150, Chick-fil-A, and being a NASCAR fan were viewed as the most Republican signals.

The third experiment then involved 1,046 respondents and tested this streamlined set of the strongest lifestyle signals alongside a candidate’s party and a single issue stance. Similar to the first experiment, results were somewhat mixed when explicit political details and nonpolitical information competed for the voter’s attention. But the data again reinforced the finding that cross-cutting lifestyle clues can blunt the impact of a candidate’s formal party affiliation.

Assessing the broader implications, Allen noted that the overarching lesson is “that the average American voter will use what car a candidate drives, or the hobbies they have, but only in the absence of real policy information.” He added, “In other words, if that is all you give folks, they can still make a decision based off of that.”

The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2023, which found that people readily infer broad ideological categories from minimal everyday behaviors. It is worth noting, however, that the earlier study focused on how people evaluate everyday peers rather than political candidates. Still, in both cases, individuals appear willing to judge political leanings based on actions that are not inherently political.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The experiments presented somewhat exaggerated candidate profiles to ensure the respondents noticed the lifestyle clues. In real campaigns, voters rarely encounter a politician defined so sharply by their coffee order and footwear.

The experiments also relied on online survey panels, which might not perfectly capture the complex decisions voters make at a real ballot box. Future studies could explore how these cultural lifestyle clues interact with demographic traits like race, gender, and religion to shape voter opinions.

The study, “Nonpolitical Identity Signals as Information Shortcuts: Evidence from Three Experiments,” was authored by Levi G. Allen and Wayde Z.C. Marsh.