Thread by @CW_PoWi

I am more than delighted that my paper "German gays go green? Voting behaviour of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in the 2021 German federal election” has now been published in Electoral Studies @ElectoralStdies. #LGB #LGBTQ #GermanPolitics @QueerSeminar
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

While it has been argued that LGB individuals vote for parties of the political left as they represent most of the core values that are meaningful to LGBs, we were mainly relying on assumptions that it is the case. This paper now provides some more evidence.

First, data from Aug 2021 show that - similar to studies from the US, UK & Canada - an affinity of LGB individuals for left-wing parties also exists in Germany. The German Greens & Left in particular disproportionately benefit. CDU/CSU & SPD are underrepresented. What mechanisms

play a role here? 1) the likelihood of identifying with the Greens increases by 11.26% among LGB individuals - compared to heterosexuals. For comparison: church membership increases identific. with the CDU/CSU on average by 10.6%,

trade union membership increases identific. with the SPD by 9.08%. At the same time, a corresponding identific. with the left increases by 4.25% for LGBs. For both parties, however, if PID is then included as an indep. predictor, no sexuality-related direct effect can be found.

But why?Using path models, it turns out that self-ID. as LGB leads to feeling socio-culturally closer to the Greens, which then has an effect on party identification. At the same time, LGB Self-ID also leads to a higher level of identification with the Greens.

This identification with the Greens then influences voting behaviour in favour of the party. With the Left, on the other hand, there is only the connection: sexuality - socio-cultural proximity - PID - vote.

While I could not observe any effect of sexuality on a PID with the AfD, there is a small effect of self-identifying as LGB on voting for the radical-right AfD. Why this might be the case can be read in the paper ;-)

Many thanks to the participants of the workshop on "Sexuality and political participation: expanding methodological and empirical frontiers" at the @ECPR Joint Sessions 2022 for their feedback.

In particular, I thank @turnbulldugarte for re-reading & commenting on the paper revised after the conference! My thanks also go to the reviewers for helpful comments and to my colleague and friend @jpthomeczek for his encouragement to write this paper.

If you would like to have a copy of the article, feel free to send me a mail or message me with your email address. Thank you very much for reading this thread :-D

@ElectoralStdies @QueerSeminar Access free for 50 days: authors.elsevier.com/a/1gDEWxRaZcPVx