Parties’ linkages to social groups are key to electoral competition. While traditionally explained in terms of long-standing social cleavages, newer theories assign some role to parties in shaping group linkages. We argue that party elites have even more influence over group linkages than afforded in existing accounts: citizens infer group linkages from `running tallies’ of recent group appeals in elite rhetoric. To test this theory, we develop a novel automated approach that uses language models to measure group appeals observationally. Using data from the UK, we connect citizens’ perceived group linkages in surveys to group appeals in parliamentary speech spanning three decades. We find that group linkages robustly track party elites’ rhetoric. The association is strongest for group appeals with policy content and among recent news media consumers. Our findings imply that party elites have considerable power to shape group linkages, even in the short run.