Is there a "childless vote" in Europe?
Jan-Erik LönnqvistVille-Juhani IlmarinenPublished in: International journal of psychology : Journal international de psychologie (2023)
We examined associations between childlessness and voting in Europe. We used cross-sectional European Social Survey data from 20 countries (n = 37,623). Our results suggest that there is a "childless vote" in Europe. Supporting our pre-registered hypothesis, childless individuals voted for parties that had visibly positioned themselves at the Green-Alternative-Libertarian (GAL) pole of the GAL-TAN (GAL vs. Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist) ideological dimension. The pre-registered explorative analyses of associations between childlessness and economic left-right ideology or other policy positions of the party for which the individual had voted did not yield results. Explorative analyses suggested in the review process showed that self-rated religiosity was independently associated with childlessness, but ideological left-right self-placement or self-ratings of political attitudes were not. Our results suggest a new demographic prognostic of vote choice, thus adding to the literature on demographic processes associated with political dynamics.