Voting for Secular Parties in the Middle East: Evidence from the 2014 General Elections in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia

Abstract

Arab uprisings paved the way for democratic elections in the Middle East and North Africa region. Yet countries in this region, except for Tunisia, were not able to maintain further democratization. Tunisia, regardless of economic turbulence and security problems, managed to hold its second parliamentary elections in October 2014, and Ennahda, the party of the popular Islamist movement, could not keep mass support. A large number of studies have examined the rise of the Islamist parties as their electoral success in the post- Arab Uprisings elections by focusing on their organizational strength as well as their social services. However, the social basis of secular parties in the region has been overlooked in the democratization literature. In this study, four competing arguments, religious–secularism cleavage, nostalgia for the old regime, negative campaign targeting Islamists, and retrospective voting, are considered as the key determinants of citizens’ party choices. By using original election survey data, this study asserts that secular Nidaa Tounes derived its support from secular people, who, at the same time, sympathized with the old regime and disfavoured Islamists