68 2 with their in-group (Dietrich and Hayes, 2023; Tate, 2003). Therefore, I employ conjoint experiments (Hainmueller et al., 2014) and randomize descriptive and substantive representation independently from one another. Previous conjoint experiments on voter and politician race/ethnicity reveal in-group preferences (Adida, 2015; Aguilar, Cunow, Desposato, et al., 2015; Lemi and Brown, 2019). However, these studies do not cover substantive representation nor religious identity in Europe, where minoritized groups in France, Germany, and the Netherlands often have a migration background in Muslim-majority countries. Standard sampling strategies would not yield enough minority participants for statistical analyses (Font and Méndez, 2013). Moreover, strict European privacy regulations limit the availability of sampling frames for racial/ethnic and religious minorities in the European context (Simon, 2017). To overcome these challenges, I surveyed a large sample of Kantar-panelists and used a mini-survey to oversample voters from France, Germany, and the Netherlands with a migration background in Turkey (France, Germany, and the Netherlands), North Africa (France), Sub-Saharan Africa (France), the Former Soviet Union (Germany), Surinam (the Netherlands), and Morocco (the Netherlands). I sampled a high number of minority respondents, with 1889 out of a total N of 3058 respondents having a migration background, of which 649 self-identify as Muslim. The findings suggest that in-group favoritism revolves around religion the most. Non-religious voters are slightly more likely to prefer their in-group and dislike the Muslim out-group than Muslims are to do the same. However, we find that voters with a migration background favor politicians without a migration background. Most significantly, the results show that voters overwhelmingly prefer substantive over descriptive representation, indicating that policy matters more than identity. Yet majority in-group favoritism reveals itself in policy positions as well; non-religious voters are the least likely to vote for politicians who stand for policies that Muslim voters tend to agree with more than non-religious voters do. The antagonistic treatment of Muslim politicians and Muslims preferred policy impedes the meaningful representation of Muslims, creating difficult dilemmas to fostering an inclusive political landscape where diversity of policy and identities can thrive (Dancygier, 2017). The implications of this paper’s conclusions are immense. Muslim politicians are electorally incentivized to actively speak out against the policy positions Muslims tend to prefer, garnering representation that is not substantive but suppressive (Aydemir and Vliegenthart, 2016, 2022), which leads to feelings of betrayal and misrepresentation amongst Muslims (Akachar et al., 2017) and ultimately leaving minority voters feeling unseen and unheard in the political systems we call our democracies.
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