Does sexual orientation matter? Exploring individual and collective forms of political participation of LGBTQ citizens in Austria and Germany

Identities have been shown to be powerful predictors of political participation, vote choice, party identification and attitudes on public policies – with the result being that individuals who share an identity can exhibit remarkable levels of cohesion with regard to political activities and beliefs (Egan 2012: 597). We also know from classic voting theory (Campbell et al. 1954), that issue orientation is one of the significant components for voting behavior (besides candidate and party preferences) as well as motivation for political participation. This paper connects those debates, addresses the role of sexual orientation in this context and explores the role that sexual orientation plays as a driver of political participation. Research on political participation of LGBTQ citizens and especially LGBTQ voting shows that LGBTQ citizens seem to be more involved in the political process (Hunklinger/ Ferch 2020; Hunklinger 2021; Turnbull-Dugarte/ Townsley 2020) than other minority groups (Bowers/ Whitley 2020; Moreau et al. 2019). This crucial difference is especially interesting and relevant since for minority groups, participation in decision-making has both instrumental and intrinsic value in challenging oppression and domination since it is instrumentally valuable because it means that all interests will be voiced (Fletcher 1998: 203-204). Against this background, this paper uses original data from the ‘LGBTQ Election Survey 2019’ in Austria and the ‘LGBTQ Election Survey 2021’ in Germany to examine individual and collective forms of political participation (Ekman/ Amna 2012) of LGBTQ citizens in Austria and Germany. I investigate connections and possible influences between political attitudes and political participation of LGBTQ citizens and set out to explore whether sexual orientation is a relevant category in analyzing political participation. Turnball-Dugarte (2020b) showed that LGBTQ voters are, possibly due to their socialization, mainly supportive of social liberalism and progressive issues. Research for European cases moreover shows, that LGBTQ people mainly favor left-wing or progressive parties (Turnbull-Dugarte 2020a; Hunklinger/ Ferch 2020; Hunklinger 2021). First results of this analysis support findings from other country cases that LGBTQ citizens are very active within a broad variety of forms of political participation and mainly support left-wing or progressive agendas. However, there is also a certain amount of LGBTQ citizens who support conservative or right-wing parties (Hunklinger/ Ajanovic 2021). The paper highlights the importance of minority rights and political participation of minorities for the functioning of a democracy and adds to our understanding of citizenship of marginalized groups in modern society.