What's happened in the US over the last many decades is that these really important identities like racial and religious identities have become associated in our minds with our party identity. So when we go vote in an election, we're not just feeling like our party wins or loses, we're feeling like our party and our racial group and our religious group and all these big parts of what makes us who we are, all of those things get wrapped up in the outcome of the election also.
