Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Vote on marriage for all
The liberal signal was worthwhile for members of the Union
Union MPs who voted for marriage for all in 2017 had to accept a smaller loss of votes in the federal election three months later than their group colleagues. In other words, voters rewarded them for supporting marriage for all.
How conservative should the Union be? The Union has been concerned with this question for years. A study by the Ifo Institute gives a hint here: too conservative is not helpful.
When the Bundestag voted on marriage for all four years ago, the Union parliamentary group was the only majority to vote against it. All other parliamentary groups – the AfD was not yet represented in the Bundestag at the time – voted together to allow people of the same sex to marry.
But there was also at the Union 75 MPswho approved the bill – which was made possible because factional discipline had been lifted in the case. Two researchers from the Ifo Institute have now examined the consequences of this voting behavior for those who deviated from the Bundestag election three months later. The result: Union politicians who voted yes received a higher approval rate than their group colleagues in the direct election.
“Voters reward Union MPs for supporting marriage for everyone,” conclude the study’s authors, Björn Kauder and Niklas Potrafke. For your examination the two looked at the development of the share of first votes among those Union MPs who stood for election in both 2013 and 2017. Constituencies whose layouts changed from 2013 to 2017 were excluded from them.
Mostly from contested constituencies
Among the remaining 198 members of the Union, the share of first votes fell by 7.93 percentage points from 45.96 percent in 2013 to 38.03 percent in 2017. (For comparison: with the second votes, the Union fell from 41.54 percent to 32.93 percent during this period .) The advocates of marriage for everyone lost less: Their approval dropped by 6.02 percentage points, while the opponents of marriage lost 8.65 percentage points for all. The advocates of marriage for all lost 2.63 percentage points less.
“In our model, we take into account that the change in the proportion of votes and the voting behavior for marriage for everyone is also influenced by other factors. These factors include, for example, the AfD share of the vote, the unemployment rate and the age or gender of the MPs,” said Potrafke. But even when such variables are taken into account, the advocates of marriage for everyone in their constituencies do 1.29 percentage points better than their group colleagues who voted no.
The change in the unemployment rate had no effect on the change in the Union’s first vote in the constituencies. “This suggests that the voting behavior on marriage for all played a bigger role for the voters than the economic development in the constituency,” said Potrafke. The 75 advocates of marriage for all came mainly from contested constituencies, as Kauder and Potrafke write, referring to an earlier study: “Union MPs there probably wanted to convince liberal voters by voting for marriage for everyone”.
The vote on marriage for everyone came about in the Bundestag because Chancellor Angela Merkel said a few days before the start of the summer break that she wanted to lead the discussion on the subject “in a situation where it is more towards a decision of conscience than I am now here by majority decision something through crumbles “. The SPD took her at her word and pushed through a vote in the Bundestag only four days later – and accepted that the Union then accused her of a “breach of trust” because Merkel had obviously not referred to the current legislative period.
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