Author:

Keywords:

cleavages, political preferences, left-right, voting motives, propensity to vote

Abstract:

Within political science there has been a long standing discussion about the persistent or diminishing influence of structural determinants on voting behavior and the extent to which alternative voting motives have taken over the explanatory power of these predictors. We investigate the influence of religion, nationalism, ethical conservatism/progressivism and left-right orientations on the voter’s general appreciation of political parties in Belgium. This method allows us to make a more qualified analysis on voting motives, in particular for smaller parties. We use data from the 2009 PartiRep election study, which show that traditional cleavages still have an important influence on political preferences. However, different party preferences are based on different cleavages and it can be assumed that these parties represent different interests and identities in society. While the left-right-dimension has a limited influence on voting preferences in Flanders, it does play a major role in Wallonia. Contrary to our expectations, the explanatory power of the left-libertarian and right-authoritarian positions is rather weak, with one major exception: the preference for Vlaams Belang is almost entirely determined by ethnocentrism. In general, the structural determinants explain ca. 20 per cent of the appreciation of political parties.