The electoral agency of Muslimahs: an intersectional perspective on preferential voting behaviour

ABSTRACT

Muslim women are often portrayed as submissive and oppressed, and blamed for a lack of political agency. At the same time, intersectional studies point out that Muslimahs manifest a pious critical agency while engaging in political activities. Yet, quantitatively and electorally speaking, less is known about gender differences in vote choices of Muslims, notably which candidates they support. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining the gendered preferential voting behaviour of Muslim minorities at the local elections of 2018 in the largest city of Belgium (Antwerp), based on an innovative analysis of combined demand-side exit-poll data with supply-side data on the candidate profiles. While our analyses show that Muslims vote more gender congruent and more religious congruent than non-Muslims, this is because male Muslims vote more for male candidates, more for Muslim candidates and more for the intersection of both of them rather than that female Muslims vote for one of their own. However, this does not mean that Muslim women are not gender sensitive or religiously conscious. Interestingly, Muslimahs do not differ substantially from non-Muslim women in gender congruent or religious congruent voting.

KEYWORDS:

• Intersectionality
• Muslim
• gender
• preferential voting

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ethnic minorities are defined as Antwerp citizens whom at least one of the parents has a non-Belgian birth nationality (Stad in cijfers, 2018).

2 UGent, UAntwerpen, VUB, UHasselt, ULB, UCL and UNamur.

3 Would you consider yourself as belonging to any specific religion or philosophical denomination? If yes, which one?

4 On a scale from 0 to 10, how important is it according to you to have an equal share of men and women in politics?

5 What has been the main reason that motivated you to cast a preference vote for your most preferred candidate? Possible answers are (a) the personality/charisma of the candidate (Examples: charisma, honesty integrity, accessibility, kindness), (b) the competence of the candidate (Examples: work done as local councillor, alderman or mayor, education, expertise, experience, work ethic, intelligence, pragmatism, vision), (c) I know the candidate and (d) I don’t know.

6 When multiple motivations were given, and they knew the candidate we analysed this as ‘know the candidate’.

7 Competences is referred to as education, expertise, experience, work ethic, intelligence, pragmatism, vision, work done as local councillor, alderman or mayor.

8 Charisma is referred to as honesty integrity, accessibility, kindness.

9 D-SA is a smaller new, local migrant party who presented a list with 37 candidates.

10 Be.One is a smaller new, local migrant party who presented a list with 10 candidates.

11 The first quintile consists of ballot position 1 to 11. A list consists of maximum 55 candidates.