Does In-Group Favouritism Lead to In-Group Voting? An Experimental Study of Vote Choice among Minority and Majority Voters

Empirical evidence suggests that ethnic minority voters favour co-ethnic candidates, while ethnic majority voters discriminate against minority candidates. However, most of these studies focus on ethnicity as a salient identity marker but fail to examine the role of religion in candidate choice. Further, little research has explored identity dynamics in minority and majority candidate choice simultaneously. Using original survey experiment data from the Netherlands, France, and Germany, we address these gaps by examining the role of ethnic and religious in-group favouritism for candidate choice among minority and majority voters. We find that ethnic majority voters display a preference for co-ethnic majority candidates over minority candidates and that this effect is reinforced by ethnic in-group favouritism. Yet, ethnic in-group favouritism has no effects for minority voters’ candidate choice. Thus, we conclude that, contrary to the reigning paradigm, ethnicity plays a greater role in candidate choice among ethnic majority than minority voters. On the other side, religious minority voters are more likely to engage in religious in-group voting, i.e. choosing co-religious candidates over candidates of other religious denomination. Moreover, we find that religious in-group favouritism is crucial for Muslim minority voters, but religious in-group favouritism among majority voters does not imply a positive bias towards co-Christian candidates. These findings have significant implications for parties and descriptive representation.