Abstract
<p>In two-party systems, dominant parties emerge as superordinate, cross-cutting categories pressured to differentiate themselves while aligning and coordinating heterogeneous social groups to be politically viable. I argue parties manage these pressures by converging on narratives reflecting subgroup hierarchy orientation and portraying subgroups as victims of discrimination and opponents as culprits. The narratives generate priors through sociopsychological infrastructure that influence perception, yielding stable coalitions but contributing to polarization. Moreover, hierarchy orientation shapes the psychological structure of superordinate partisan identities. The Democratic Party, which views itself as a vehicle for inclusion and exhibits a hierarchy-attenuating orientation, allows for dual recategorization, permitting identifiers to retain subgroup identities under the broader partisan identity. In contrast, the Republican Party, which is more racially homogeneous and is hierarchy-enhancing, emphasizes single recategorization–uniting subgroups by emphasizing partisanship exclusively. Results indicate two distinct partisan ethos of conflict consistently influence voter preferences and affect in competitive victimhood across parties.</p>