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The Genetics of Voting: An Australian Twin Study

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Abstract

Previously we and others have shown evidence for genetic influences on political attitudes and sociodemographic indicators (Martin 1987; Posner et al. 1996; Truett et al. 1992; Eaves et al. 1999). However, the nature of the relationship between political attitudes, social indictors and voting behavior has not been investigated. While heritability estimates for social and political attitudes have been reported in previous research, the heritability for vote choice has not. Furthermore, if vote choice is heritable, it is unclear whether the heritable component can be accounted for through the genetic influence on related social and political traits, or if there exists a unique genetic component specific to voting behavior. In mailed surveys of adult Australian twins, we asked respondents to indicate their usual voting preference as well as attitudes on contemporary individual political items. When vote choice was dichotomized as Labor versus Conservative, twin correlations were r mz = 0.81 (1661 pairs), and r dz = 0.69 (1727 pairs) consistent with modest genetic influence (a 2 = 0.24). However, multivariate genetic analysis showed no unique genetic contribution to voting preference; rather, the genetic influence in vote choice could be explained by shared genetic influences in perceived social class, church attendance and certain key political attitude items.

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Acknowledgments

Data collection was funded by NHMRC grants to NGM and NIAAA grants to ACH. We thank David Smyth for database support and the twins for their cooperation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Genetic Epidemiology Unit, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Peter K. Hatemi, Sarah E. Medland, Katherine I. Morley & Nicholas G. Martin

  2. Department of Political Science, University of Nebraska, 511 Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE, 68588, USA

    Peter K. Hatemi

  3. Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Sarah E. Medland

  4. School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Katherine I. Morley

  5. Department of Psychiatry, Washington University, St Louis, WA, USA

    Andrew C. Heath

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  1. Peter K. Hatemi
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  2. Sarah E. Medland
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  4. Andrew C. Heath
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  5. Nicholas G. Martin
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Correspondence to Peter K. Hatemi.

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Edited by Danielle Posthuma

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Hatemi, P.K., Medland, S.E., Morley, K.I. et al. The Genetics of Voting: An Australian Twin Study. Behav Genet 37, 435–448 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-006-9138-8

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