Left Behind Whom? Economic Status Loss and Populist Radical Right Voting
Left Behind Whom? Economic Status Loss and Populist Radical Right Voting
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CRIS Scientific Seminar 2022-2023
Friday, September 30th 2022, 11:45 am
Sciences Po (1, Place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin) - Room A201 + Zoom
Left Behind Whom? Economic Status Loss and Populist Radical Right Voting
Giuseppe Ciccolini
PhD Student, European University Institute
Consultant for the OECD, Adjunct Professor at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Citizens’ resentment at losing out to the rest of society is commonly thought to be the foundation of the demand for the populist radical right (PRR).
Yet whether PRR voters are objectively disadvantaged remains disputed, which raises doubts regarding the alleged economic basis behind PRR support.
Relying on European Social Survey (ESS) individual-level data from 23 elections across Western Europe, I demonstrate that the PRR polls better among social classes facing economic status loss. To do so, I leverage income data from Eurostat and develop a novel positional measure of income.
This approach allows me to gauge (objective) economic status decline as distinct from worsening financial circumstances. The pre-eminence of the former over the latter as regards PRR voting is further corroborated by evidence on cultural stances and redistributive preferences.
My study confirms the complementarity of cultural- and economic-based explanations of PRR voting and reveals one electoral consequence of rising economic inequalities.
