2025/06/10 by Sanne van Oosten · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Gender and Women's Rights
paper · doi:10.55271/rp00100
openalex publication_date 2025/06/10 · openalex created_date 2025/06/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
The political preferences of Muslims are often the source of contention and misinformation. In continental Europe, there is not much data available on political preferences of Muslims due to strict privacy regulations, creating a knowledge lacuna allowing for misinformation to fester. In this report, I focus on three countries where privacy regulations are particularly longstanding: France, Germany, and the Netherlands. I use a novel sampling method that complies with privacy regulations while achieving a large enough sample of minority respondents to conduct statistical analyses. Regarding policy preferences, I find that respondents with a Muslim minority background have more conservative attitudes towards same-sex adoption, while showing very similar attitudes to white majority respondents when it comes to gender equality. Respondents with a Muslim minority background are, however, more progressive on immigration and religious freedoms for Muslims. Regarding voting preferences, Muslims show very similar patterns to their majority counterparts, with a few exceptions (La France Insoumise (FI) in France, and in the Netherlands DENK and Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV)). This paper seeks to put an end to persistent speculation about the political preferences of Muslims, particularly Muslims, in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.