Abstract
AbstractThis article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural backlash’, ‘economic grievances’ and ‘protest voting’ – in a novel way. Our main contribution is that we contrast far-right voters with voters of centre-right parties, traditional left-wing parties and abstainers. Equally innovative is the comparison between mature and post-communist democracies. Using European Social Survey data (2014–16), we conclude that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups. Yet, these differences are significantly smaller in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, far-right voters are not the so-called socioeconomic ‘losers of globalization’: this is only true when compared with centre-right voters. Concerning protest voting, distrust of supranational governance particularly enhances far-right voting. Overall, our study concludes that more fine-grained distinctions pay off and avoid misleading generalizations about ‘European far-right voters’ often presented in public debates.
Highlights
This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural backlash’, ‘economic grievances’ and ‘protest voting’ – in a novel way
Analysing attitudes and voting behaviour in 17 countries covered in the European Social Survey (ESS) in 2014 and 2016, we find that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups in both mature and post-communist democracies
A negative estimate indicates a higher score on the respective variable: the more likely it is that one votes for the far right, rather than respectively for a centre-right party, a traditional left-wing party, or abstains from voting
Summary
This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural backlash’, ‘economic grievances’ and ‘protest voting’ – in a novel way. Using European Social Survey data (2014–16), we conclude that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups These differences are significantly smaller in Eastern Europe. The economic crisis in 2008 acted as a catalyst and generally increased these parties’ performance further all over Europe (Algan et al 2017; Kriesi and Pappas 2015; Zagórski et al 2019). This trend has been accompanied by the electoral decline of mainstream parties from both the left and right – social democrats and Christian democrats. This article combines three explanatory approaches and focuses on socioeconomic deprivation, opposition to progressive values (such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism) and protest against political elites (Golder 2016; Ivarsflaten 2008; Norris and Inglehart 2019).
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