Immigrant concentration at the neighbourhood level and bloc voting: The case of Amsterdam

Bloc voting, whereby people vote for candidates of the same immigrant background as themselves, provides one possible avenue for immigrants to access political systems. A relevant but understudied element in the bloc voting process is the neighbourhood and, specifically, the effects of its demographic concentration. While we have observed how immigrant voters become socialised within the context of immigrant neighbourhoods, we do not yet understand how immigrant concentration at this level impacts immigrants’ political behaviour. Do such high levels relate more strongly to bloc voting than low levels? Using data from Amsterdam’s 2010 and 2014 local elections, this article compares voting patterns of the Dutch capital’s three largest immigrant groups: Turks, Moroccans and Surinamese. The study’s analyses determine whether changes within a neighbourhood relate to immigrant candidate votes. Our findings reveal that for some groups, the percentage of eligible co-immigrant voters in a neighbourhood shows a positive non-linear correlation with the percentage of votes for candidates of the same immigrant background. This illustrates that for these groups in these contexts a concentration effect is at play.