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Church Voting Recommendations, Voter Preferences, and Political Decisions
Author(s) -
Torgler Benno,
Stadelmann David,
Portmann Marco
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal for the scientific study of religion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.941
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1468-5906
pISSN - 0021-8294
DOI - 10.1111/jssr.12669
Subject(s) - voting , protestantism , leverage (statistics) , politics , political science , institution , disapproval voting , public administration , public economics , economics , law , computer science , machine learning
In Switzerland, two key church institutions—the Conference of Swiss Bishops and the Federation of Protestant Churches—make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this situation to directly measure religious organizations’ power to reflect and shape human decision making. That is, using a direct measure of voters’ commitment to their religious institution, we analyze whether they are more likely to vote in line with this organization's voting recommendation. We find that these recommendations do indeed wield influence, implying that even in a secularized world, religion plays a crucial role in voting decisions. Our results hold for both aggregate and individual‐level voting decisions.