Forschungsfrage/Ziel:

A well-documented fact is that Muslim citizens tend to vote for left-wing parties in greater proportion than non-Muslims. In Western Europe, the gap in the vote for leftwing parties exceeds 30 percentage points and is extremely stable. Interestingly, the gap endures despite Muslims' integration, which is expected to militate against group voting. Nevertheless, research on the voting behavior of Muslims in Europe is not yet sufficiently developed. The proposed project aims to fill this lacuna, asking why is it that Muslims continue to vote as a group? And what factors account for their leaning towards the left?

We propose a theoretical framework which explains Muslims’ voting preferences by taking count not only of their integration into the host society, but also of social exclusion and discrimination to which they are regularly subjected as a group. We argue that exclusion moderates the effect of integration on the vote choice of Muslims, as it limits the scope of mobilization opportunities and strengthens the saliency of group identity and group interests in the voting calculus of the individual. Specifically, we contend that exclusion will have greater salience in the vote of Muslims who are more integrated into the host society than on the electoral choices of their co-ethnics who are less so.

The empirical analyses will comprise three studies. Study 1 will provide a panoramic view of Muslims’ voting behavior in 18 European democracies, by combining existing survey data from 2002 to 2023 with novel regional and country-level data on racial hate crimes (social exclusion) and the electoral success of the radical right (political exclusion). This study will explore the relationship between Muslims’ vote choice, different individual-level dimensions of integration into the host society, and social exclusion indicators (both objective and perceived). Study 2 will adopt a distinctive ethnographic approach, known as Photovoice, a methodology relatively underutilized within the realm of political science. Notably, Photovoice has historically been employed to amplify the voices of communities that have long been marginalized within the political discourse. This innovative technique will provide an avenue for Muslims in Germany and France to visually capture and reflect upon their personal perceptions of the discrimination they encounter. We will use the Photovoice methodology to refine and further develop our hypotheses regarding the complex interplay of integration, exclusion and political behavior as concerns Muslim minorities. These hypotheses will then be tested in Study 3, through online survey experiments and naturalistic quasi experiments in Germany, Denmark, France and the UK. The experimental design of the surveys will expose Muslims to various manifestations of exclusion and thus will allow us to establish causality and identify mechanisms involved in the dynamic investigated.

Methodologically, combining cross-sectional, qualitative, and experimental data will inform a comprehensive account of the political behavior of a growing electoral group in Europe. Theoretically, our project will shed light on a phenomenon that has already substantively affected the electoral landscape in Europe and has the potential to reshape it altogether by rendering ethnic and religious identity a crucial dimension of party competition.

In cooperation with:
Odelia Oshri (Hebrew University of Jerusalem),
Reut Itzkovitch-Malka (Open University of Israel)