Conservative Politicians and Voting on Same-Sex Marriage

Björn Kauder and Niklas Potrafke

No 6706, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: same-sex marriage; gay rights; safe districts; vote margins; supermajorities; roll-call votes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D78 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-eur and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Conservative Politicians and Voting on Same‐sex Marriage (2019)
Journal Article: Conservative Politicians and Voting on Same-sex Marriage (2019)
Working Paper: Conservative Politicians and Voting on Same-sex Marriage (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6706

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