Ethnicity and Preferential Voting in Belgium

Ethnic (immigrant) minorities have made important inroads into formal electoral politics in Europe. In Belgium, the country under study in this paper, the percentage of ethnic minority representatives has also increased, albeit slowly and not very drastically. Currently less than 10% of the Belgian MPs have an ethnic minority background, and the majority of them are women (Celis & Erzeel 2013). One of the reasons for the slow increase in ethnic minority representation is the finding that Belgian political parties are somewhat hesitant to select (more than a few) candidates with an ethnic minority background on electoral lists and to offer them safe list positions. Parties fear that traditional voters will reject ethnic minority candidates, especially ethnic minority men, on the basis of ethnic/racist stereotyping (Celis, Erzeel, Mügge & Damstra 2014). So far however no study has actually empirically tested the voter bias assumption: we don’t know whether voters present a bias that is unfavorable for ethnic minority candidates, and whether this bias is also gendered. This paper helps to fill this research gap by conducting an over-time analysis of preferential voting for ethnic minority candidates in Belgium (1999-2014). We use factual data and original voter survey data to analyze whether ethnic minority candidates (and ethnic minority men in particular) receive fewer preferential votes that other candidates, and whether this is the result of an actual voter bias (i.e. voters who disapprove of ethnic minority candidates) or a system bias (i.e. parties placing ethnic minorities on inferior list positions).