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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Daniel Oesch  and
Line Rennwald
Daniel Oesch*
Affiliation:
Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (LINES), University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Line Rennwald
Affiliation:
European University Institute, San Domenico di Fiesole, Italy
*
Address for correspondence: Daniel Oesch, Life Course and Inequality Research Centre (LINES), University of Lausanne, CH‐1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Email: daniel.oesch@unil.ch
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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.

Keywords

cleavageradical rightsocial classvotingworking class

Information

Type
Original Articles
Information
European Journal of Political Research , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 783 - 807
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 European Consortium for Political Research

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