The literature on the political participation of stigmatised social minorities theorises that discriminated citizens may be more prone to engage politically. Several mechanisms motivate this expectation: minorities’ greater awareness of politics’ importance for their rights, heightened perception of threat, and empathy with other stigmatised groups also seeking representation. Leveraging unique data from an original survey fielded to a large self-selected sample of Italian LGBTIQ+ citizens in 2024, we empirically assess the impact of having experienced different forms of discrimination in one’s own life on respondents’ political participation. We gather data on both different forms of discrimination related to gender identity and sexual orientation – e.g., from verbal to physical, in different social contexts – as well as on the experience of discrimination unrelated to LGBTIQ+ identity. Our descriptive and multivariate analyses show that, in fact, Italian LGBTIQ+ citizens are significantly less likely to go out and vote if they have experienced discrimination in their lives. The depressing impact of discrimination on the turnout of individuals from gender and sexual minorities applies to individual forms of discrimination, and is compounded by the intersectionality of discrimination on multiple grounds (e.g., also class-, disability-, or ethnicity-based). Furthermore, trans and nonbinary respondents – already the most likely to abstain within our LGBTIQ+ sample – also experience the highest levels of discrimination, with a significant impact on their lower propensity to vote. Overall, our data shows that, rather than motivating turnout, stigmatised LGBTIQ+ citizens’ real experience of discrimination exacerbates their social alienation by making them more detached from politics, translating structural social inequalities in political terms.
