The Role of Religion in Party Communication: A Comparison of Political Parties in Seven European Countries

Political scientists have strongly focused on the demand side of religion – the religiosity of the voters and its effects on electoral behavior. However, the supply side – political parties – has been largely neglected. This is surprising since there are at least two theoretical approaches claiming that political parties refer to religion and religious issues in their political communication. First, in recent years, a considerable number of scholars have claimed that the relevance of religion in radical right parties’ mobilization strategies is increasing. Therefore, the current rise of far-right populist parties presenting themselves as defenders of Christian values from a “Muslim” thread calls for a systematic examination of the role of religion in party politics. Second, cleavage theory claims religion to be one of the shaping issues of party competition which – according to many scholars – still nowadays affects party competition. We empirically assess to what extent the religious cleavage is still powerful in structuring the way political parties communicate, analyzing the differences between left and right-wing parties, paying particular attention to the communication of center-right and far-right parties. In this respect the salience of religion and religious issues in party communication as well as positive and negative evaluations of certain religious groups are measured, revealing that party ideology is a good predictor of both salience and framing of religious issues. We put forward a dictionary-based quantitative content analysis of electoral manifestos and Facebook posts during election campaigns of all relevant political parties in Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Great Britain, Switzerland and Austria. The findings suggest that religion is a salient topic for far-right parties, which mostly address anti-Islam communication and, to a lesser extent, for center-right mainstream parties. On the other hand, laicism still seems to be a relevant topic, particularly in France, and for European left-wing parties. However, religious issues are ignored in campaigning strategies on Facebook, except anti-Islam communication of far-right parties. Thus, references to religion or religious groups are much more present in election manifestos than on Facebook. Regarding these programs, our study provides evidence that far-right parties refer more often to Christianism in a positive way than others do, mostly in the context of a negative evaluation of Muslims. In addition, Christian democrats refer to Christianity - to a smaller extent – in a more positive way, however, without evaluating other religions in a negative way.