TY - JOUR
T1 - Moral politics
T2 - The religious factor in referenda voting
AU - Rapp, Carolin
AU - Traunmüller, Richard
AU - Freitag, Markus
AU - Vatter, Adrian
PY - 2014/1/1
Y1 - 2014/1/1
N2 - This article combines the research strands of moral politics and political behavior by focusing on the effect of individual and contextual religiosity on individual vote decisions in popular initiatives and public referenda concerning morally charged issues. We rely on a total of 13 surveys with 1,000 respondents each conducted after every referendum on moral policies in Switzerland between 1992 and 2012. Results based on cross-classified multilevel models show that religious behaving instead of nominal religious belonging plays a crucial role in decision making on moral issues. This supports the idea that the traditional confessional cleavage is replaced by a new religious cleavage that divides the religious from the secular. This newer cleavage is characterized by party alignments that extend from electoral to direct democratic voting behavior. Overall, our study lends support to previous findings drawn from American research on moral politics, direct democracies, and the public role of religion.
AB - This article combines the research strands of moral politics and political behavior by focusing on the effect of individual and contextual religiosity on individual vote decisions in popular initiatives and public referenda concerning morally charged issues. We rely on a total of 13 surveys with 1,000 respondents each conducted after every referendum on moral policies in Switzerland between 1992 and 2012. Results based on cross-classified multilevel models show that religious behaving instead of nominal religious belonging plays a crucial role in decision making on moral issues. This supports the idea that the traditional confessional cleavage is replaced by a new religious cleavage that divides the religious from the secular. This newer cleavage is characterized by party alignments that extend from electoral to direct democratic voting behavior. Overall, our study lends support to previous findings drawn from American research on moral politics, direct democracies, and the public role of religion.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84903310449&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S1755048314000303
DO - 10.1017/S1755048314000303
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84903310449
SN - 1755-0483
VL - 7
SP - 418
EP - 443
JO - Politics and Religion
JF - Politics and Religion
IS - 2
ER -