Muslims caught in a struggle between redistribution and recognition. Matching partisan supply and electoral preferences

This article contributes to further explore the (leftist) party preferences of Muslims in a secular democracy (Azabar and Thijssen, 2020) while relying on solidarity frames as a fundamental heuristic to understand partisan competition (Thijssen and Verheyen, 2022). Drawing on content analyses of party manifestos (supply side data) and electoral exit poll data (demand side data) in Flanders (Belgium), a fragmented party system, we aim to study the party differentiation along solidarity lines towards Muslims and to what extent this aligns with Muslims’ voting behavior, and issue preferences. Going beyond previous studied cleavages, we expect that Muslims will be cross-pressured between the compassionate solidarity claims of social-democratic and socialist parties and the empathic solidarity claims of Christian-democratic and ecologist parties. Furthermore, we expect preference voting for Muslim candidates will be a convenient solution to deal with the contradiction between redistributive and recognition claims of the political parties.