Electoral competition in Europe's new tripolar political space: Class voting for the left, centre‐right and radical right

2018/01/10 by Daniel Oesch, Line Rennwald · 508 citations
Social Sciences · #Class (philosophy) #Competition (biology) #European Union Policy and Governance #Law #Left and right #New Left #New Right #Political economy #Political radicalism #Political science #Politics #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #Radical right #Social Policy and Reform Studies #Social class #Sociology #Space (punctuation) #Voting #Working class

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1475-6765.12259

published in European Journal of Political Research 57(4), 783-807 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2018/01/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02

Abstract

Abstract The rise of the radical right fundamentally changes the face of electoral competition in Western Europe. Bipolar competition is becoming tripolar, as the two dominant party poles of the twentieth century – the left and the centre‐right – are challenged by a third pole of the radical right. Between 2000 and 2015, the radical right has secured more than 12 per cent of the vote in over ten Western European countries. This article shows how electoral competition between the three party poles plays out at the micro level of social classes. It presents a model of class voting that distinguishes between classes that are a party's preserve, classes that are contested strongholds of two parties and classes over which there is an open competition. Using seven rounds of the European Social Survey, it shows that sociocultural professionals form the party preserve of the left, and large employers and managers the preserve of the centre‐right. However, the radical right competes with the centre‐right for the votes of small business owners, and it challenges the left over its working‐class stronghold. These two contested strongholds attest to the co‐existence of old and new patterns of class voting. Old patterns are structured by an economic conflict: Production workers vote for the left and small business owners for the centre‐right based on their economic attitudes. In contrast, new patterns are linked to the rise of the radical right and structured by a cultural conflict.

Citations

• The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement
• Immigration, Europe and the ‘new’ cultural dimension
• Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries compared

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