The impact of Attitudinal Cleavages on Political Party Preferences in Belgium

The study of voting behavior and party identifications in multiparty systems requires a specific approach, because the single party identity, as used in traditional party identification literature, is far less common in these countries (Van der Eijk & Niemöller, 1983; Thomassen & Rosema, 2009).The most frequently used divisions that scholars on multiparty systems make, are based on the traditional left and right ideology or political cleavages. The left-right approach assumes that voters will position themselves one, overarching cleavage, wherein ethical, economical and religious attitudes will be grouped as well. Ventura (2001) argues that this approach is useful in countries such as France, where one ideological cleavage will suffice to separate voters and parties. In multiparty systems with more than one cleavage, such as Belgium, we need a different identification approach. Therefore, we will compare the effects of traditional and postmodern cleavages on party preferences. Research in this domain traditionally uses voting behavior as a dependent variable. In this article, we will also take into account the agreement with party positions, because this allows us to make more accurate, representative and comparable analyses between different parties or voting blocs (Van der Eijk et al, 2006). We will use data from a representative sample of 2,331 respondents who were interviewed during the 2009 PARTIREP election study, performed by four Belgian universities. Respondents were asked to what extent they agree with the opinions of all Belgian parties. This results in an individual appreciation for every political party with maximized response rates and a more reliable overall result (Bochsler & Sciarini, 2010). Additionally, we overcome problems of incomparability between different parties. Furthermore, this approach allows us to investigate overlapping support or multiple party identities (Garry, 2007; Niemi, Wright & Powell, 1987; Weisberg, 1980).