Resocialization or Persistence? Origin-Country Political Culture and Immigrant Party Preferences in Western Europe

Research on immigrant political behaviour has largely focused on electoral participation and the role of residence-country institutions and integration policies. Less attention has been paid to how immigrants vote once they participate, and most existing studies are rather descriptive. Immigrants are often portrayed as disproportionately supporting left-wing parties, a pattern commonly explained by several theoretical approaches. Classical sociological theories link political preferences to class and religious cleavages, suggesting that many immigrants belong to social groups traditionally aligned with the left. Utilitarian and policy-based explanations similarly argue that immigrants favour centre-left parties because of their more liberal stances on immigration. However, immigrant voting behaviour is far from homogeneous. Variation across migrant groups has been attributed to differences in social acceptance in host societies, as well as to political socialisation and party identification formed in countries of origin. Building on theories of political (re)socialisation—exposure, resilience, and transferability—and drawing on the “impressionable years” argument, this study moves beyond turnout to examine differences in party choice between natives and non-natives across Western Europe, and whether and how origin-country political culture leaves a lasting imprint on immigrant voting behaviour. The empirical analysis uses European Social Survey data from 2002 to 2023 (Rounds 1–11), covering citizens of foreign origin in Western European democracies. Individual-level survey data are combined with origin-country indicators from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) dataset. First, we describe voting patterns of natives and non-natives across party families. Second, we rely on multilevel models of generic party choice using a pooled, stacked data matrix to assess whether the determinants of party choice differ systematically between immigrants and native-born citizens. Finally, we examine how religious affiliation and prior exposure to democratic versus authoritarian regimes shape post-migration partisan alignment, and how generation status, age at arrival, and length of residence moderate these effects.