The Religious Factor in the Electoral Behavior of the Voter on the Example of Municipal Elections in Moscow in 2022

Baykov Mikhail Denisovich ORCID: 0000-0003-0365-4635 Student, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Saint Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities 127051, Russia, Moscow, Moscow, lane. Likhov, 6, office 420 baykoff.mixaif@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Pavlov Nikita Mikhailovich ORCID: 0000-0003-4799-7832 Student, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Saint Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities 127051, Russia, Moscow, Moscow, lane. Likhov, 6, of. 420 nika.ss2203@mail.ru

IntroductionThe question of the relationship between religious beliefs and electoral behavior has traditionally aroused great interest both from research scientists and from practitioners of the political process:

government structures, political technologists, PR managers of politicians, officials and elected persons.

At the same time, it is important to note that the religious factor does not occupy the first places in the lists of motives for participation in political life ^[1]. And in general, the vague concepts of "religious beliefs" and "religiosity" are difficult to characterize accurately in order to clearly speak about the sincerity of people's beliefs. A number of studies of religious behavior suggest that religiosity does not influence the behavior and assessment of any general situation, however, within groups of practicing believers, the influence of their beliefs on social life leaves no doubt ^[2]. However, for our study, the definition of the degree of religiosity does not play a significant role. The central place is occupied by the subjective attitude of respondents to the use of religion in politics, and the influence of a voter's religious beliefs on his choice.

Since the 1990s, religious institutions in Russia have been regaining their influence and gaining new followers who accept religious norms and behavior ^[3]. In addition, the spiritual component of the President's political course over the past ten years has been aimed at developing spiritual and moral foundations and supporting traditional values. The state helps the development of religious organizations in every possible way – lobbies for the construction of religious buildings, tightens legislation in relation to those who offend the feelings of believers, involves religious figures in public and advisory councils of authorities ^[4]. Even the picture of religious decline leaves religion a significant role in people's lives ^[5]. In this regard, the relevance of our research is revealed from the best side.

Moscow, being the main place of political life in Russia, populated by representatives of various religions, is of particular interest in the study of electoral behavior. The elections of municipal deputies held in 2022 attracted a lot of attention for a number of reasons, and the use of remote electronic voting technologies allowed to increase turnout in comparison with previous elections of this level. The role of the religious factor in the electoral behavior of Muscovites in the municipal elections in 2022 is the subject of this work.

The purpose of our work is to assess the motivation of the political choice and participation of the electorate in the 2022 election campaign in Moscow from the point of view of the religious factor.

To achieve the goal, we propose to solve the following tasks:

1. To analyze the essence of electoral behavior and the significance of the religious factor.

2.                 To characterize the role of local government elections and the place of the religious factor in the political realities of Moscow.

3.                 To determine the influence of the religious factor on the electoral behavior of Muscovites in the municipal elections in 2022 based on the data of a sociological survey.

Research hypothesis: a person's religiosity contributes to the development of a picture of political values that influence his political choice and participation in the election campaign.

The object of our research is electoral behavior, the subject is the religious factor in electoral behavior. To achieve the necessary results, we use methods of analyzing scientific literature and comparing it, as well as resorting to a sociological survey.

The essence of electoral behaviorTo further develop the research topic, we need to determine the essence of electoral behavior.

By electoral behavior we mean a set of actions and actions of citizens related to the implementation of local or national elections to government bodies, as well as their participation in referendums ^[6].

Russian researchers distinguish the following types of political participation: participation in elections, signing appeals, participation in rallies, work for a party or candidate, participation in demonstrations, participation in boycotts, participation in unauthorized strikes, seizure of buildings ^[7]. Our article deals exclusively with legitimate activities – participation in elections, authorized public events, work in election headquarters and tracking campaign news.

Political science distinguishes two types of factors of electoral behavior ^[8]:

1. Short–term (in other studies - subject).

2. Long-term (non-subject).

Short–term or subjective factors have a source of influence - agitation, opinion of public opinion leaders, the media, the influence of political leaders, economic conjuncture, and the like.

Long–term factors are factors that do not have an external source of influence, in this case public opinion is formed due to internal beliefs, value representations and individual characteristics of the object (voter). This includes gender, age, education, income, nationality and religion ^[9].

The religious factor in electoral behavior determines the possibility of the influence of religious institutions and religious beliefs on the voter's participation or non-participation in elections, on the level of his support for certain candidates ^[10]. The religious factor is actively used by various groups in their political interests – both on the positive and negative sides ^[11]. The voter can be guided by the words of his spiritual leaders ^[12] or individually assess the compliance of the candidate's program and behavior with his ideas about morality and morality dictated by religious beliefs ^[13]. Also, the voter can look at the religiosity of the candidate himself (whether he attends divine services, communicates with the clergy, leads a spiritual life, takes an anti-religious position) and in this regard decides on his support ^[14]. In Western studies, attention is often paid to confessional religious preferences transmitted within the family ^[15].

The correct positioning of one's religiosity and attention to the religious beliefs of the voter often becomes a key indicator of the candidate's work to achieve success.

Municipal elections and the religious factor in MoscowBefore starting the analysis of our sociological survey, we will understand the subtleties of Moscow's electoral behavior and the religious picture in the capital.

Despite the popularity of the opinion about the insignificant importance of local self-government in Russia, municipal authorities in Moscow play a significant role ^[16], attracting the attention of researchers ^[17]. After the large-scale protests of 2011-2012, the powers of the LSG in Moscow were expanded. According to Law No. 39^[18], municipal assemblies on the territory of "old Moscow" have the right to express distrust to the head of the district council, to hear annual reports of district officials, to coordinate the list of houses subject to major repairs, to coordinate the choice of a land plot of garages and objects of religious significance, to coordinate capital construction projects and projects for the placement of retail facilities and cafes.

In addition to these seemingly unimportant powers, the sphere of influence of the municipal council includes the representation of the real interests of Muscovites at the basic level – the construction of kindergartens, schools, hospitals, control of the living conditions of the population, the arrangement of the territory. Municipal politics also accumulates activists from among young people, becomes the starting point for the career of many politicians ^[19].

The peculiarities of Moscow's district communities make it possible to evaluate the result of voting as a kind of indicator of a voter's political preferences ^[20]. Measure the degree of satisfaction with the actions of the authorities and officials.

The 2022 elections were held in a difficult socio-political environment. And therefore they received increased attention from the voters, while the action of the opposition forces was greatly reduced. This is due both to the emigration of representatives of the opposition community and to the introduction of remote electronic voting. It is important to note that attention to all non-federal elections in Moscow has remained at the level of 20-35% for more than a decade. Approximately such a percentage of the electorate could be mobilized by the authorities to support their representatives. Meanwhile, the opposition, not being homogeneous in its electoral strategy, on the one hand called for boycotting the elections, on the other, on the contrary, called for an organized vote for any non-systemic candidate.

Sometimes the opposition, led by municipal deputies officially integrated into the system of public power, organized public protest events, fighting for their electoral rights ^[21]. The most large-scale events were held in 2019 around the elections to the Moscow City Duma ^[22]. Among the most prominent protest figures were municipal deputies with All-Russian political fame and a media resource. At the same time, it is worth noting that there was no broad representation of opposition forces in municipal councils.

In the context of the above, the importance of municipal elections for the life of the capital, both of a purely political and economic nature, leaves no doubt. However, it is worth saying a few words about the existing assessment of the religious factor in Moscow.

According to official data, more than 70% of the population of Moscow belong to believers. The analysis of the Committee for Interregional Relations and National Policy of the City of Moscow notes a lot of indicators about the religious factor in the capital. We are interested in their conclusions about the total number and ratio of believers, and their comments on the relationship of religion with political life are also important. According to these indicators, more than 60% of believers experience the influence of religion on their lives in terms of political preferences. The level of tolerance for religious teachings in the capital is also high.

Our research involves a sociological survey of Muscovites to understand the influence of their religious beliefs on political choice, as well as to establish the significance of the religious factor in political technologies. After a brief theoretical review, let's turn to the analysis of the survey.

Analysis of the sociological surveyTurning to the discussion of the role of the religious factor in electoral behavior, let us turn to the results of the questionnaire "The religious factor in electoral behavior ..." conducted by us in the period from 07/22/2022 to 08/25/2022. The questionnaire was compiled on the Yandex.Forms service.

The distribution was carried out through publications in groups of the VKontakte social network and personal communication.

We tried to have representatives of various religious associations take part in the survey. They sent requests for the publication of the survey to the open groups "Orthodox joke" (213 thousand participants), "APS | Academy of Decent Seminarians" (38 thousand participants), "Catholics of Moscow" (488 participants), "Overheard by Catholics" (6 thousand participants), "Protestants in Russia" (2.4 thousand participants), "Typical Protestant" (769 participants), "Islam" (472 thousand participants), as well as to the student communities of Moscow universities (including the communities of university churches), Orthodox parishes of Moscow, their Sunday schools and youth associations. In addition, we personally distributed the questionnaire to students, employees of religious organizations and followers of various religions (however, we received only 10% of the responses in this way). The level of correlation between different data sources showed high validity of the study.

Unfortunately, not all groups assisted us – many Moscow universities were engaged in communication with applicants during this period and therefore could not distribute our questionnaire, and administrators of Orthodox groups blocked our messages altogether and sometimes (in three cases) wrote in a rather defiant tone that we were engaged in vicious activities. It is difficult to say which of the holy fathers wrote about the vice of opinion polls, but the fact of refusal remains facts. Only the "APS | Academy of Decent Seminarians" went to the meeting, proving their decency, and several parish communities (at the same time Catholic and Protestant groups willingly participated and even offered assistance in further work). That is why the total number of Orthodox Christians was 47.9%, which is at odds with the data of the Public Opinion Foundation ^[23]. and the Center "Religion in Modern Society" of the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences – in Russia more than 72% call themselves Orthodox, in Moscow more than 64%^[24].However, this problem was solved by us at the stage of compiling the final aggregate.

The questionnaire submitted for filling out consisted of three pages^[25]:

1. Information about gender, age, position, residence and registration, the desire to participate in elections and the degree of immersion in the election campaign.

2. Information about the respondent's religious beliefs, the scale of evaluation of the candidate's beliefs for municipal deputies, the importance of publicity of the candidate's religious beliefs and the influence of the respondent's religious beliefs on his choice.

3. The scale of importance of the candidate's characteristics. The respondent's personal opinion about the influence of the candidate's religious beliefs on his popularity and the influence of the voter's beliefs on his choice.

1002 people took part in the survey. The following diagram shows the distribution of respondents by 5 parameters: gender, age, religion, place of registration and status:

Figure 1. Histogram of key parameters of the general population.In connection with the study of the Moscow picture of electoral behavior and the need to take into account the opinions of people who have the right to vote in the municipal elections on September 9-11, 2022, we selected the results of the survey.

We excluded minors and residents of other regions from the number of respondents. Thus, the number of respondents was reduced to 554 people, and the distribution received this appearance:

Figure 2. Histogram of the total population.Having conducted a sample, we were able to achieve an optimal ratio of representatives of various religions, in a certain sense corresponding to the available statistics of official organizations and scientific centers on the distribution of believers in the city of Moscow.

The distribution was as follows:

Figure 3. Distribution of the total population by religious beliefs.We note an important thing here – in our questionnaire, four possible answers were provided to the question "Are you a believer?":

1) Yes, and religion occupies an important place in my life.

2) Yes, but religion does not affect my life.

3) No, but I admit the existence of higher forces.

4) No, and I do not admit the existence of higher forces.

In case of choosing the first two options, the respondent was asked to indicate which religion he considers himself a follower of. In the case of choosing the last two options, this question was not asked. In the final set of questionnaire data, none of the respondents chose the third option, so we do not take into account people who do not belong to any religion.

Turning to the analysis of religiosity as a factor of electoral behavior, let us turn to questions about elections. The question "Will you vote in the municipal elections in Moscow this fall?" led to this distribution of answers:

Figure 4. "Will you vote in the municipal elections in Moscow this fall?"And such a ratio of responses by groups of believers:

Figure 5. The ratio of responses in religious groups.The established data fairly accurately reflect the trend of electoral activity in Moscow – 20.4% of those who declared their mandatory participation are correlated with the turnout in Moscow in the municipal elections of 2017 (14.82%), the mayoral elections in 2018 (30.9%) and the elections to the Moscow City Duma in 2019 (21.77%).

The difficult socio-political situation of recent times, the decline in the influence of opposition forces and the change in technologies after the constitutional reform ^[26] can be called the reasons for the low result of the "I won't" option (16.2%) – people are more actively interested in politics and are ready to support various forces, despite the fact that in recent years the opposition has called for a boycott of elections (since 2018), and not to take part in them. At the same time, socio-economic problems are likely to lead to an increase in turnout at the 2022 elections in comparison with previous electoral cycles in Moscow and will correspond to the mayoral turnout in 2018, and possibly even exceed it ^[27] (curiously, according to our survey, 57% of respondents follow the news, candidates, work at the headquarters or they pay attention to campaign materials – and only 43% are not involved in municipal election campaigns in any way).

In the studied groups, the lowest result is scored by the options "I won't" and "I didn't know about the elections" (except for Protestantism – only 6 out of 20 respondents will participate in the elections "If possible"). The option "I will definitely be there, it's important" is most popular among representatives of Islam, the largest number of Catholics also speaks about the importance of participating in elections. Half of the representatives of Orthodoxy and more than half of Atheists prefer to vote "If possible". At the same time, among the Orthodox there is an equal number of those who definitely do not want to vote and those who will definitely vote.

The above data allow us to evaluate the model of electoral behavior among the bearers of certain religious beliefs, however, they do not allow us to understand the role of these beliefs in the formation of such behavior. To further develop the problem, let's turn to the results of the question "Are you guided by your religious beliefs when voting for a candidate?". The picture of the answers appeared as follows:

Figure 6. "When voting for a candidate, are you guided by your religious beliefs?"As you can see from the answer chart, 50.5% answer the question "No" – they are not guided by their religious beliefs when voting for a candidate.

At the same time, it is important to look at the distribution of responses by religious groups – the "No" option is most popular among Orthodox and atheists (who deny the very existence of religious beliefs). At the same time, other Christians – Catholics and Protestants – on the contrary, answer "Yes" in 53% and 90% of cases, respectively. Muslims mostly didn't think about it.

It is also important to take into account how religious people answered the question "Are you a believer?" – among Orthodox 39% chose the option "Yes, but religion does not affect my life." This explains the popularity of the answer "No" among Orthodox Christians – 98 out of 150 respondents who answered "No" admit that religion does not affect their lives (28% of all those who chose Orthodoxy). Catholics and Protestants answered "Yes, and religion occupies an important place in my life" in 56% and 100% of cases, respectively.

The question of the importance of the criterion "Religious affiliation of the candidate" revealed such a ratio:

Figure 7. Importance of the criterion / "Candidate's religious affiliation"The results of this question convincingly suggest that the religious affiliation of a candidate for municipal deputies is not so important to voters.

Only 8.3% consider it important (Orthodox and Catholics), however, the relatively neutral "Not very important" ranks second in popularity in the distribution of results. In general, respondents give importance to the political experience, social status and education of the candidate.

The question offering to assess the attitude to "The candidate's demonstration of his religious beliefs" showed such results that correlate well with previous conclusions.:

Figure 8. Evaluate / "Demonstration of the candidate's religious beliefs"

According to these answers, the majority of respondents assess the demonstration of religious beliefs by candidates neutrally. And yet, in a negative way, a smaller number of respondents (17% rather and 6.1% unequivocally negative) – 33.6% positively assess this behavior of the candidate (26.4% rather and 7.2% unequivocally positive). The answer "Unequivocally positive" was chosen in all Christian groups.

We assume that religious affiliation is not so important for people, but at the same time the candidate's demonstration of his religious beliefs is evaluated as one of the indicators of his decency and honesty. A religious candidate, although his religion is not as important as his education, inspires confidence and often falls into the moral beliefs of voters.

This is evidenced by the results of the question about the traditional values of the candidate:

Figure 9. "Is it important for you that the candidate adheres to traditional values?"As we can see, 54.2% of respondents positively assess the importance of the candidate's commitment to traditional values.

The answer "Yes" takes the first place in all groups. At the same time, it is quite difficult to say what traditional values are – all respondents in an open question about the preferred values of a politician answered about decency, honesty, attentive attitude to people and other general moral principles. Such ideas are quite consistent with the image of a good Christian or Muslim.

One of the final questions we decided to ask directly, "Do you think the candidate's religious beliefs affect the growth of his popularity?".

Figure 10. "Do you think the candidate's religious beliefs influence the growth of his popularity?"This question testifies to the private opinion of people regarding the political use of the candidate's religiosity in the election campaign.

And, as we can see, 64.6% of respondents believe that this is just one of many factors in creating an image. And 23.8% suggests that religiosity contributes to a decline in popularity.

Thus, our survey helped to identify many data on the role of religious beliefs and electoral behavior of representatives of various religions.

ResultsThe conducted research allows us to form a comprehensive idea of the significance of the religious factor in the electoral behavior of Muscovites.

We have fulfilled our tasks – we have analyzed the essence of electoral behavior, examined its factors, characterized the importance of local self-government in Moscow and showed the importance of the religious factor, we also conducted an independent sociological survey and analyzed its results.

Based on the results of the survey, we were able to achieve the goal and assessed the motivation of the voter's political choice and his behavior from the point of view of the religious factor.

Our hypothesis that a person's religiosity contributes to the development of a picture of political values that influence his political choice and participation in the campaign has been confirmed only partially. The political choice often depends on the ethical and moral ideas formed by religion, with the help of which the program and the candidate's image are evaluated. At the same time, the electoral behavior (for example, the problem of participation / non-participation) of the voter is not dependent on his religiosity. At least as of 2022.

We can explain the high turnout and victory of the United Russia party as a consequence of the introduction of DEG technologies, as well as the socio-political situation that attracted many people to participate in the elections who wanted to express support for the political course being pursued. Also, the victory of United Russia can be explained through the religious factor – it is no secret that representatives of this party, unlike a number of opposition movements, adhere to traditional values and therefore the religious beliefs of the voter are better reflected in the programs of United Russia.

Thus, the work carried out contributes to understanding the role of religion in the electoral and political process. Our research can be used for further work on the problems of electoral behavior, and the results can help political technologists in organizing election campaigns in Moscow, who will be able to use the religious factor to achieve success.

APPENDIX 1Questionnaire of the survey "Research "Religious factor in electoral behavior of the voter on the example of municipal elections in Moscow in 2022""