Study of Youth Religiosity and its Effect on their Electoral Behaviors

Abstract

Religiosity has had important political effects as one of the most important features of Iranian identity. These effects based on contemporary and historical developments, indicate clearly the dynamic and creative nature of this identity in the social construction of political realities in Iran. The present study applies Hunter (1991; 2006) and Wuthnow's (1988) theory of cultural wars to investigate the impact of religiosity on electoral behaviors in terms of voting tendency and participation in elections. The statistical population of the study consists of young people aged 22-40 who have participated in at least three general elections. From this statistical population, 377 people were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling as the statistical sample of the research. Linear regression and logistics were used to analyze the data. The results show that the Degree of religiosity of youth has a significant effect on their electoral behaviors in terms of voting Tendency and participation in elections. So that, the youth who had a high average religiosity tended to the fundamentalists and participate more in elections. Whereas, young people with low average religiosity tended to be reformists and were less likely to participate in elections This study contributes to Hunter (1991; 2006) and Wuthnow's (1988) theory of cultural wars by testing it in a unique political context and therefore contextualizes the theory.