Conservative Politicians and Voting on Same-Sex Marriage

Arbeitspapier

We examine whether conservative politicians are less likely to support same-sex marriage when they run for office in safe districts using new data based on a roll-call vote in the national German parliament. The results show that the margin of the majority for the incumbent in the previous election was a strong predictor for supporting same-sex marriage. When the majority increased by one percentage point, the likelihood of voting in favour of same-sex marriage decreased by around 1.3 percentage points. We conjecture that politicians are election-motivated – even when submitting roll-call votes on a matter of conscience.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 6706

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation ; Capitalist Systems: Political Economy
• Subject: same-sex marriage ; gay rights ; safe districts ; vote margins ; supermajorities ; roll-call votes

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Kauder, Björn ; Potrafke, Niklas
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2017

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/172982
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET