Abstract Recent research demonstrates that many Americans feel that their states are an important part of their identity and that they are proud to be from their state. This work also shows that politics plays a significant role in shaping state identity strength, particularly in explaining why some people feel alienated from their state. The present study builds on this work by focusing on the 2024 election. Using a module in the Cooperative Election Study (CES), I examine state identity before and after the election. I find that state identities are generally stable over time, though Republicans may have been more sensitive to the election outcome than Democrats when comparing their pre-election and postelection answers. I also confirm findings in existing work by showing that (1) many people have strong attachments to their state, (2) being on the winning side of an election boosts state identities in the aggregate both for the 2020 election and the 2024 election, and (3) political considerations dominate explanations for why people lack state pride.
Deborah J. Schildkraut (Thu,) studied this question.