A Sociological Study of Youth Religiosity and its effect on Their Voting Tendency

Religiosity has had important political effects as one of the most important features of Iranian identity. These effects based on contemporary and historical developments, indicate clearly the dynamic and creative nature of this identity in the social construction of political realities in Iran. The present study applies Hunter (1991; 2006) and Wuthnow’s (1988) theory of cultural wars to investigate the impact of religiosity on electoral behaviors in terms of voting tendency.The existence of research contradictions regarding the relationship between religiosity and electoral behavior has been provided the necessity of clarifying this relationship in the form of a new research. The statistical population of the study consists of young people aged 22-40 who have participated in at least three general elections. From this statistical population, 377 people were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling as the statistical sample of the research.. logistics Regression were used to analyze the data. The results show that the Degree of religiosity of youth has a significant effect on their electoral behaviors in terms of voting Tendency. So that, the youth who had a high average religiosity tended to be more fundamentalist than reformist. Whereas, young people with low average religiosity tended to be reformists Than fundamentalist. This study contributes to Hunter (1991; 2006) and Wuthnow’s (1988) theory of cultural wars by testing it in a unique political context and therefore contextualizes the theory.