Unified voters in a divided society: Ideology and regionalism in Belgium

Abstract

In societies divided along ethnocultural lines, intergroup cooperation can often be a challenging task. This process can be even more complex if political parties and voters are divided along those same social cleavages. This study focuses on the case of Belgium and explores whether divided societies with separate party systems necessarily lead to distinct partisan alignments. Using electoral survey data from the 2014 Belgian federal election, we investigate whether political ideology is stronger than ethnolinguistic group membership in shaping electoral behaviour. The results demonstrate that although Belgian voters are divided along linguistic lines when it comes to preferences about centralization, they remain aligned along party families on social and economic dimensions.