Chapter 2. Where Have All the Working Class Voters Gone?
2.4 Interpreting and concluding
The present work is an attempt to map out the political demand of the European working class in the present century. Drawing from the existing literature, I have restricted my 'where' question to abstention as well as to three party families of particular interest for this class group: the far-left, the social democrats (SDP) and the far-right. Also based on previous works, the 'why' question has been restricted here to three key dimensions: trust in political institutions, economic anxiety, and sentiment towards migration. Unlike those previous works, mine attempts to (1) enlarge the scope; (2) focus on the (broad) working class; (3) use larger samples that make it possible to introduce a time dimension in the analysis. The results lead us to four key conclusions.
First, abstention is the political position that has absorbed the majority of working-class vote, especially in recent years. It is also remarkable that status as a manual worker increases the
probability of voting for both the far-right and the far-left compared to belonging to most other class groups (but not all of them). However, in absolute terms, abstention beats all other options by a substantial margin. Additionally, all these trends have become more acute after the Great Recession.
Moreover, the presence/absence of viable far-right platforms might be having an impact on the evolution across time of turnout (negative), the performance of far-left options (negative) and SDP (positive).
Second, the drivers of the three key choices (non-voting, far-right, SDP) associated with the working class display an interesting pattern. Workers turning away from SDP and towards the far-right share with non-voters the mistrust towards political institutions, but not feelings of economic anxiety, which greatly affect the decision to turn out and vote but not to do so for the far-right. And although there does not seem to be any strong indication of economic anxiety being a significant driver, there is a very clear indication of anti-immigration being the key factor of choosing the far-right. Most interestingly, those choosing abstention also share the trait, while SDP working class vote is positively affected with pro-immigration views. These results are substantially aligned with existing research for both all voters (Inglehart and Norris 2016) and working-class voters (Borschnier and Kriesi 2012).
However, now I am able to confirm it for a broader period of time and a larger number of countries.
More significantly, I can trace some time-related evolution.
Because, and this is the third key finding, these effects have become more intense since 2008, pointing to a possible ‘crisis effect’.
Fourth, while working class voters who remain with SDP trust mainstream political institutions and are, in general, pro-immigration rights (thus have a culturally liberal preference set), none of these factors bears an overwhelming degree of intensity, therefore suggesting that SDP working class vote is not overwhelmingly ideological, with the possible exception of an upward trend of the importance of immigration-related perspectives. What (if anything), motivates workers to remain within social democracy is something that requires further research, perhaps following the structural divisions within the working class (Rovny and Rovny 2017 is a relevant first step in this direction).
It appears as though classical right-leaning preferences on economic and social policy (i.e. being anti-redistribution and anti-immigration) move workers towards the far-right and towards abstention, while economic anxiety seems to be determinant for the growing trend against turnout.
At the same time, mistrust in existing institutions takes working class voters in all directions (but mostly towards abstention). Among these, the far-right would attract working class members who are warier of immigration, with these platforms owning the issue. Meanwhile, economically pressed workers would continue to abstain, and the far-left would be more effective in its capacity to grow among these segments there where the far-right is missing.
Would this suggest that, wherever the far-right is present, the identitarian-related dimension is taking over the political conflict (particularly after 2008) while economically pressed workers are being left at the margins? The evidence shown here does not go far enough to support this claim, but it certainly suggests that this is a hypothesis worth exploring in further research.
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