Crosscutting social circles and political choice - Effects of personal network composition on voting behavior in The Netherlands

This paper describes the personal networks of those who were eligible to vote in The Netherlands in 1998, It also examines and tests alternative explanations for the effects of the social composition of networks on voting behavior. To this end, data were collected in two representative national surveys (valid N = 3148). Multinomial logistic diagonal reference models are applied to analyze these data. The results show that the personal networks of the Dutch are homogenous with respect to religion, education and social status. These characteristics of members of personal networks have significant effects on the respondent's voting behavior, effects that are stronger for social ties characterized by intimate contact. There were no effects of crosscutting social circles on not voting. Contrary to what was expected, ego's similarity to his network members did not affect his voting either. We interpret our findings in terms of a process of social influence through direct ties rather than of social comparison to similar others. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.