Recent work on empathy has drawn attention to several important political functions that empathy can play in democracy: empathy can help reduce political polarization, facilitate understanding, and improve deliberation. For empathy to play these political roles, it seems that it must be possible for democratic citizens to empathize with social groups; however, philosophers typically conceive of empathy as a dyadic phenomenon which takes place between an individual empathizer and an individual target person whose perspective they empathize with. This generates a puzzle for defenders of empathy’s democratic functions: is it possible to genuinely empathize with groups? If so, how should we make sense of this idea? If not, can we still vindicate the important political functions of empathy? This paper explores the available options for grappling with this puzzle. The most straightforward adaption of empathy to groups—empathizing with group agents—comes with controversial metaphysical commitments. However, we consider several alternative ways to understand group empathy—empathy with representative members of groups; empathy with hypothetical agents who we take to be representative of a group; and empathy with shared group “perspectives”. The latter proposal, we show, offers a promising way to understand group empathy and to vindicate its political functions.