The Feminist Voter: Voting or not Voting for a Feminist Party?

Despite the fact that feminist movements and organisations have been active in politics for more than a century, there are few examples of feminists forming political parties and even fewer examples of successful feminist parties. This paper studies sympathizers of the arguably most successful feminist party in recent times, the Swedish Feminist initiative (Fi), and addresses two questions. First, who are the Fi sympathizers and voters and second, how do they reason when they choose to vote or not vote for Fi? The first question is studied by an analysis of survey data from the Swedish election surveys from 2014 and the national SOM-surveys. The second part uses original data from a set of open ended questions from the on line based citizen panel at University of Gothenburg. This data contains voting motivations from more than a thousand Fi-sympathizers. The results show that the voters are predominantly young, female and highly educated, and that they share not only FI:s feminist views but also the party's left wing ideology. The predominant reasons for voting for the party are ideological, but other considerations such as the desire for something new in politics also play a part. The reasons for not voting for the party, despite sympathizing with its goals, include tactical considerations—the party is seen as to new or small to have real impact—but also skepticism about feminism as a party ideology on its own, and prioritization of other issues such as social class or climate.