The Intergenerational Transmission of Voting Intentions in a Multiparty Setting: An Analysis of Voting Intentions and Political Discussion Among 15-Year-Old Adolescents and Their Parents in Belgium

The intergenerational transmission of political orientations has been the topic of considerable research over the past few decades, but much of the evidence remains limited to two-party systems. In this study, we use data from the first wave of the Parent-Child Socialization Study conducted among 3,426 adolescents and their parents in the Flemish region of Belgium. Even in this multiparty system, we find a strong correspondence between voting intentions of parents and children, enhanced by the degree of politicization within the family. Talking about politics among parents and children has a significant positive effect on parent-child party correspondence, and more particularly political discussion with one's father seems to have a stronger effect on father-child party correspondence than discussion with one's mother does on mother-child correspondence.