What Drives Voter Bias Against Muslim Politicians? An Experimental Examination

Abstract Religious and ethnic minorities remain underrepresented in political office, but its reasons are debated. Using administrative data from Norwegian local elections, we show that candidates with Muslim names receive fewer personal votes, and propose that this is (partly) due to political beliefs about Muslims as politicians.To examine this claim, we identify salient political beliefs and implement a conjoint experiment that estimates anti-Muslim bias with and without information on these beliefs.In a low-information setting, respondents exhibit a substantial anti-Muslim bias, but providing belief-relevant information reduces this anti-Muslim bias by 2–5 percentage points. The largest reduction occurs when respondents learn candidates’ positions on minority-rights issues. This reduction is driven by right-wing voters and is large enough to eliminate the left-right gap in anti-Muslim bias. These findings show a strong political component in the anti-Muslim bias.