Our findings suggest that different modes of measurement may yield differing evidence of polarization and consensus over U.S. national membership. Moreover, debates over Americanness may reflect not just competing values, but also disputes over who best embodies shared national ideals.

Surprisingly, these understandings of Americanness are only modestly associated with respondents’ partisan identities. That is, Democrats and Republicans overlap far more than expected - challenging the idea that they hold fundamentally opposing views of Americanness.

We find a majority of Americans define U.S. national membership using both ethnocultural criteria (e.g., being White) and civic expectations (e.g., embracing July 4th). Others adhere to more commonly familiar definitions (e.g., “exclusive” and “inclusive” conceptions of Americanness).

How do ordinary Americans define the boundaries of U.S. national membership? In this working paper (w/ @sakeefkarim.bsky.social), we combine conjoint data with latent class regressions to examine how Americans intuitively judge who is truly American.

osf.io/preprints/so...