Abstract
For a long time, Spain was thought of as an outlier because it did not have a significant radical right movement. However, the sudden popularity of VOX among voters in Andalusia has put an end to so-called “Spanish exceptionalism”. The rise of this radical right party is important for two reasons: its potential direct impact on the political system, and the way in which it will affect other political players. The purpose of this research is to explore the factors that have led voters to cast ballots for VOX during the 2018 regional elections in Andalusia. Regression analysis has been carried out in order to test some of the most widely accepted theories in the literature about the radical right vote. The results show that VOX’s vote is fundamentally dictated by broader socio-political factors related to territorial model, ideological self-identification and perception of political leaders. In this sense, two of the most accepted set of explanations—those which consider that the vote for the radical right is conditioned by economic or identity-related vulnerability—are refuted.
Highlights
Since the late 1980s, several right-wing parties have been growing in influence in Western Europe, leading to considerable interest from the media and academics
As detailed in the previous methodology section, we have created four logistic regression models in order to verify the utility of the losers of globalization (H1), identity vulnerability (H2) and contextual socio-political factors (H3) hypotheses to explain the vote for VOX in the 2018 regional elections in Andalusia
The results suggest that the vote for the radical right party is accounted for to a significant extent by a comfortable socio-economic status and, at the same time, it is not attractive to the lower classes
Summary
Since the late 1980s, several right-wing parties have been growing in influence in Western Europe, leading to considerable interest from the media and academics. The growing importance of the family of far right parties has been spearheaded by the populist radical right, which has been its dominant and most successful expression (but not the only one) (Mudde 2007) While some see this phenomenon as one of the greatest threats to contemporary liberal democracies (Plattner 2010), others claim that it is given a disproportionate amount of academic and media attention, and warn against overestimating its success, since its political influence is limited (Mudde 2014). While these parties were making significant progress in Europe , three countries did not follow this trend: Spain, Portugal and Ireland. From the influence of the legacy of the dictatorship (which would negate any possibility of a rise of the radical right)
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