Immigrant concentration at the neighbourhood level and bloc voting: The case of Amsterdam

Abstract

Bloc voting, whereby people vote for candidates of the same immigrant background as themselves, provides one possible avenue for immigrants to access political systems. A relevant but understudied element in the bloc voting process is the neighbourhood and, specifically, the effects of its demographic concentration. While we have observed how immigrant voters become socialised within the context of immigrant neighbourhoods, we do not yet understand how immigrant concentration at this level impacts immigrants’ political behaviour. Do such high levels relate more strongly to bloc voting than low levels? Using data from Amsterdam’s 2010 and 2014 local elections, this article compares voting patterns of the Dutch capital’s three largest immigrant groups: Turks, Moroccans and Surinamese. The study’s analyses determine whether changes within a neighbourhood relate to immigrant candidate votes. Our findings reveal that for some groups, the percentage of eligible co-immigrant voters in a neighbourhood shows a positive non-linear correlation with the percentage of votes for candidates of the same immigrant background. This illustrates that for these groups in these contexts a concentration effect is at play.

Globalization, robotization, and electoral outcomes: Evidence from spatial regressions for Italy

“…In this section, therefore, we estimate the augmented version of the baseline equation, that is, Equation () including the spatially lagged dependent variable and IVs, with the use of the generalized spatial two‐stage least‐squares (GS2SLS) estimator. This modeling choice was previously used by Agnew and Shin (2017) and Buonanno, Prarolo, and Vanin (2016) in Italian elections, Vermeulen et al (2020) for voting behavior in Amsterdam, Maza et al (2019) for pro‐independence vote in Catalonia, and Branton, Demeritt, Pulido, and Meernik (2019) for the Peace Treaty referendum in Colombia.…”

“…Moreover, as shown by Johnston et al (2004), electors in one area may be conditioned by the electoral campaign in nearby regions. Recently, Vermeulen, Kranendonk, and Michon (2020) ascertained empirically that groups of closely related persons concentrated in neighboring areas affect each other's voting preferences and Maza, Villaverde, and Hierro (2019) found evidence about the political spillovers in pro‐independence vote in the 2017 regional election in Catalonia.…”

Explaining the migrant–native vote gap under open-list proportional representation

“…The size and spatial concentration of ethnic groups at the local level influence the electoral engagement and resources of ethnic minority groups (Bird et al, 2011). Ethnic neighbourhoods function as settings of political socialisation, where political information and cues are transmitted (Bratsberg et al, 2020;Vermeulen et al, 2020). The larger and more concentrated co-ethnic minority groups are, the easier it is for minority candidates to reach the whole community with targeted campaigning and communication.…”

“…For minorities, shared ethnicity may act as a heuristic cue of common interests, especially if life chances are strongly shaped by ethnic background (Dawson, 1994: 61). Therefore, migrants and their descendants vote for candidates of the same ethnic background as themselves in relatively high numbers (Baysu and Swyngedouw, 2020;Bergh and Bjørklund, 2011;Vermeulen et al, 2020). 2 Like in other European countries (Bergh and Bjørklund, 2011), in Finland the likelihood of migrant candidates on the ballot is higher in larger cities, where candidates' access to personal and social resources is most crucial.…”

Does In-Group Consolidation Polarize Attitudes Toward Immigrants?

“… 3. In addition, we estimated several preliminary specifications with squared context-level variables to see whether there are non-linear associations, such as threshold effects, between those variables and attitudes (cf. Vermeulen et al, 2020). However, we found no evidence of such associations. …”