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Objectives. The attitudes of gun owners and nongun owners appear more polarized in the last two decades. We posit that divisions between gun owners and nongun owners reflect emerging political identities, especially among gun owners. Methods. Using data from the General Social Survey (1972–2012) we examine if and when this gun ownership divergence began to shape the political behavior of the two groups by analyzing voting patterns in presidential elections. Results. We first observe that relative to conventional predictors of vote choice, gun ownership is important, reliable, and robust across election cycles. Since the 1970s, possessing a firearm increases the likelihood of voting for Republican candidates. Second, we find that the impact of gun ownership on the likelihood of voting for a Republican candidate increased across elections, reaching a level in 2012 nearly 50 percent higher than in 1972. The voting choices of gun owners and nonowners are therefore distinct and increasingly so over the past several decades. Conclusions. Given the significant proportion of the electorate who owns guns, the prominence of guns in social and political culture, and the weight of gun lobbies in political affairs, the growing divide between gun owners and nonowners will likely continue and significantly impact electoral politics. Gun owners are developing a powerful political identity that rivals other groups’ characteristics in its ability to predict voting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research has demonstrated that representations of opinion distributions can impact individual-level judgments, the perceptual processes that yield estimates of that opinion are not yet fully explored. This study focuses exclusively on the association between personal opinion and perceived pubic opinion, examining its magnitude across several political figures and within multivariate models of opinion perception. Moreover, the association between affective intensity toward a political figure and perceived discrepancy with public opinion is also investigated. Overall, findings highlight a strong relationship between personal and perceived public sentiment. While occasionally significant, the effects of group attachments are relatively modest. Additionally, findings suggest that as affective orientation toward political figures advances from neutrality to highly favorable or unfavorable, perceived discrepancies with public sentiment rise considerably. Implications and future research considerations are discussed in some detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]