Toward electoral (ir)relevance of moral traditionalism?: Religious decline and voting in Western Europe (1981–2017)

This article tests two contrasting hypotheses about changes in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism-progressiveness, which pertains to attitudes toward matters of procreation, sexuality, and family and gender roles. While the "cultural turn" literature expects the electoral rele...

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VerfasserInnen: Pless, Anna (Verfasst von) ; Tromp, Paul (Verfasst von) ; Houtman, Dick 1963- (Verfasst von)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
Verfügbarkeit prüfen: HBZ Gateway
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Veröffentlicht: 2023
In: Politics and religion
Jahr: 2023, Band: 16, Heft: 2, Seiten: 324-345
weitere Schlagwörter:B cultural politics
B Voting
B Conservative parties
B moral traditionalism–progressiveness
B Secularization
B religious parties
B Western Europe
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Zusammenfassung:This article tests two contrasting hypotheses about changes in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism-progressiveness, which pertains to attitudes toward matters of procreation, sexuality, and family and gender roles. While the "cultural turn" literature expects the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism to increase over time alongside that of all other cultural issues, studies inspired by secularization theory rather predict a decrease in its relevance—due to religious decline. Analyzing the data from the European Values Study (1981-2017) for 20 West European countries, we find empirical evidence for a decrease and no indication of an increase in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism. Religious decline weakened the effect of moral traditionalism on religious and conservative voting over time due to the most traditionalist voters shifting away from these parties. Our findings, therefore, highlight the need to differentiate between different types of cultural motives behind voting choice in Western Europe.
ISSN:1755-0491
Enthält:Enthalten in: Politics and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S1755048323000068