Voting against the tide: Why voters cross ethnolinguistic lines in the Brussels Capital Region

Why do voters engage in cross-ethnic voting within a consociation? While electoral support in deeply divided societies is expected to follow ethnic lines, it is often overlooked that parties also receive substantial support from members outside their core ethnic constituencies. This paper aims to explore the motivations behind such cross-ethnic voting, focusing on the Brussels Capital Region (BCR) in Belgium. The BCR constitutes a regional consociation aimed at addressing divisions between Dutch and French speakers. Drawing on 25 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with voters who identify with one language group while voting for the other in the elections for the Brussels Parliament, our findings indicate that voters cross linguistic lines to align their vote with their policy preferences, ideologies, or cross-cutting (linguistic) identities, or are driven by pragmatic and/or strategic considerations. The results offer valuable insights regarding the quality of democracy under consociational conditions.