Education’s impact on explanations of radical right-wing voting
Marcel Lubbers (Utrecht University, the Netherlands)
& Jochem Tolsma (Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands)
Abstract
One of the reactions to the large demographic changes in Europe due to migration has been
the rise of radical right-wing parties. Previous research has shown that education is one of the
most relevant explanations of this voting behavior. By pooling the European Social Surveys
from 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008, we test Europe-wide the extent to which ideological and
protest explanations of radical right-wing voting differ between higher and lower educated
people. Generally, the lower educated base their choice for the radical right less on
ideological attitudes and political distrust than the higher educated. The lower educated who
do not support the core ideology of the radical right are still relatively likely to vote the
radical right. Our findings have strong implications for understanding why lower social strata
vote for the radical right; we need to develop alternative explanations for why lower educated
people who do not support radical right ideologies still vote for these parties.
Keywords: radical right; migrant threat; ideology; protest; education
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Education’s impact on explanations of radical right-wing voting
Introduction
Almost all contributions addressing explanations of radical right-wing support have
substantiated that anti-immigrant attitudes affect voting for the radical right (Kitschelt 1995;
Lubbers, Gijsberts & Scheepers 2002; Norris 2005; Van der Brug, Fennema & Tillie 2005;
Arzheimer & Carter 2006; Ivarsflaten 2008; Rydgren 2008; Oesch 2008; Ford & Goodwin
2010). This explains why the lower educated are more likely to vote for the radical right than
the higher educated, since the lower educated hold on average more often unfavorable
attitudes toward migrants (Lubbers 2001; Norris 2005). It is unknown, however, to what
extent anti-immigrant attitudes and other attitudes related to the core ideology of the radical
right explain support for these parties among both the lower and higher educated alike.
It is hardly surprising that anti-immigrant attitudes are important predictors of the
radical right-wing vote, as radical right campaigns focus on immigration issues and the
(lacking) integration of ethnic minorities (Mudde 2007; Rydgren 2007). The absence of an
anti-immigrant attitudes effect would seem to reflect an irrational voting behavior (Tillie
1995). Nevertheless, ‘ideological explanations’ and ‘protest explanations’ have been
competing in the debate on the importance of different explanations for radical right support,
(Kitschelt 1995; Norris 2005; Van der Brug et al. 2005; Ivarsflaten 2008; Rydgren 2008;
Cutts, Ford & Goodwin 2010). Ideologically motivated voters will vote for a radical rightwing party because the party is closest to their convictions. Protest voters vote for a radical
right-wing party not necessarily because they agree with the program of the party, but mainly
to oppose established parties and to show their distrust in politicians in general. Recently, the
concept of protest voting has spread and is viewed as an outlet of social divisions between
elite and common people (Mudde 2007). Opposition to the (cultural) elite is then expressed by
2
a vote for a populist party, a party that claims to serve the interests of the common people.
Protest voters feel attracted to the populist rhetoric of the radical right. Empirical research has
shown that both perspectives contribute to explaining radical right-wing support. Antiimmigrant attitudes have turned out to be most decisive, though (Rydgren 2008; Ivarsflaten
2008).
Oesch (2008) found that anti-immigrant attitudes predicted radical right-wing voting
equally strongly among manual workers and other social classes. However, and albeit the
insignificance, he concluded that ‘cultural fears seem to be less decisive for manual workers
than for the middle class’ (Oesch 2008, 365), whereas a reversed pattern appeared for
economic concerns. Lubbers and Güveli’s (2007) study on the Netherlands showed that the
impact of anti-immigrant attitudes and political distrust varied strongly between educational
categories. Among the lower educated, it did not matter that much whether they perceived
economic ethnic threat due to migrants or distrusted politics. For the higher educated,
however, the effect of these attitudes was stronger; they were likely to vote for the List Pim
Fortuyn (LPF), a defunct populist right-wing Dutch party, only when they perceived ethnic
threat or distrusted politicians.
Norris (2005) regards the LPF party as a peculiar radical right-wing party because of
its liberal position on moral issues. It is therefore doubtful whether the observed moderation
(interaction effect) of ethnic attitudes by educational level reflects a more general pattern. In
that case, it would have consequences on interpreting support for the radical right among
lower educated voters. The general interpretation is that lower educated people are more
likely to vote for the radical right because they perceive stronger threats from migrants and
have higher levels of political distrust than the higher educated. This is confirmed over and
again; lower educated show higher levels of ethnic threat and political distrust, and this
explains (in part) their overrepresentation (Lubbers et al. 2002; Norris 2005). However, if
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these attitudes have a relatively small impact within the group of the lower educated, we need
to develop alternative explanations for why the lower educated who do not support these
attitudes vote for the radical right. Our aim in this contribution is to test to what extent
ideological and protest explanations predict radical right-wing voting in various European
countries, and to what extent this is conditional on the educational level.
Expectations
The main theories explaining radical right-wing support and addressing the demand side
perspective suggest that voters choose the radical right because they perceive it as closest to
their own stance on migration and integration issues, or closest to serve their interests when
protesting against the political elite. In that sense, there is nothing special about these voters
(Van der Brug et al. 2000); they just calculate rationally which party they perceive to serve
their interests best at a specific moment. All studies show one thing: the radical right-wing
electorate stands out in its hostile attitude toward migrants (Kitschelt 1995; Billiet & De Witte
1995; Lubbers 2001; Norris 2005; Coffé, Heyndels & Vermeir 2007; Ivarsflaten 2008;
Rydgren 2008; Oesch 2008). Studies have provided evidence that nationalistic attitudes,
authoritarian attitudes and political distrust also affect radical right voting. Yet, such attitudes
also seem to affect voting for another party in a multiparty system. For example, conservative
voters often share authoritarian and nationalist stances, and radical left-wing voters often
share political dissatisfaction with the electorate of the radical right (Lubbers 2001;
Ivarsflaten 2008). However, as far as we know, no study has shown that an electorate within
the party system resembles the radical right-wing electorate due to perceptions of ethnic threat
or unfavorable attitudes toward migrants.
Where do these attitudes stem from? Social Identity Theory and Ethnic Conflict
Theory are often used to explain negative attitudes toward migrants and ethnic out-groups.
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The synthesis of these theories – Ethnic Competition Theory – has also been used to explain
radical right-wing voting behavior (Lubbers et al. 2002; Mudde 2007). The premise of ECT is
that natives compete with migrants and ethnic out-groups for scarce economic, political or
cultural resources. Due to this (perceived) competition, people have a stronger need to protect
or maintain their positive social identity (Meuleman, Davidov & Billiet, 2009; Rydgren 2007;
Tolsma, Lubbers & Coenders 2007; Semeyonov, Raijman & Goroszeisky 2006; Gijsberts,
Scheepers & Hagendoorn 2005; Olzak 1992). A positive group membership, and hence a
positive social identity is derived by emphasizing positive features of the ingroup (i.e. social
identification) and by stressing less favorable characteristics of the outgroup (social contraidentification). Negative evaluations of the outgroup evolve as a result of the social
identification and social contra-identification processes. Within societies that face
immigration and undergo rapid demographic changes, it is generally assumed that people
react negatively toward immigrants and ethnic minorities.
People with lower levels of human capital experience a less positive appraisal in
meritocratic societies. Consequently, they have a stronger need to develop and maintain their
(positive) social identity (Brown 2000). Moreover, the lower social strata in society compete
more strongly with ethnic outgroups because they generally live closer to ethnic minority
members, and are more likely to compete for the same jobs in the lower echelons of the labor
market (Tolsma et al. 2007). Both mechanisms explain why in order to reach a positive social
identity they contra-identify more strongly with ethnic outgroups than people with a higher
level of human capital. Research has corroborated over and again that lower levels of
education result in stronger unfavorable attitudes toward ethnic minorities, and consequently
in an increased likelihood of voting for the radical right (Mayer 1999; Lubbers et al. 2002).
In the research on radical right-wing voting, there has been a discussion on the relative
importance of social background (i.e. education and social class) on the one hand, and party
5
ideologies/attitudes, on the other hand (Norris 2005; Van der Burg & Fennema 2005; Lubbers
et al. 2002). Some have claimed that social background is irrelevant because its effects are
negligible in comparison with attitude effects, chiefly the attitude toward migrants, and is
often insignificant when included in a model containing both social background and attitudes
(Kessler & Freeman 2005; Fennema & Van der Brug 2007; Betz 2009). Others stressed the
importance of social background characteristics since they determine these attitudes (Lubbers
et al. 2002; Mayer 1999).
Both interpretations are questionable, however. Lubbers & Güveli (2007) showed that
the impact of unfavorable attitudes toward migrants on support for the Dutch party LPF was
conditional on the level of education. Ethnic hostility turned out to have a smaller effect
among the lower educated. The higher educated are not often unfavorable toward migrants,
but those who are so were more likely to vote for the radical right. Among the lower educated
who are more often unfavorable toward migrants, it did not matter that much whether they felt
positive or negative toward migrants. Because social background (sometimes) affects radical
right-wing voting directly, and indirectly through anti-immigrant attitudes and conditions the
impact of anti-immigrant attitudes on radical right support, the question on the relative impact
of social background vis-à-vis anti-immigrant attitudes becomes unanswerable. Whereas
unfavorable attitudes explain radical right-wing voting behavior more than any other attitude,
as well as why the lower educated are more likely to vote for the radical right than the higher
educated, this only moderately explains radical right voting among the overrepresented group
of lower educated people. However, we do not know whether this finding can also be
observed in other countries.
The theoretical reasoning on the interaction between unfavorable attitudes toward
migrants and education is twofold. First, higher educated people might show greater
calculating skills when choosing parties to match their ideological preferences. Second, higher
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educated people with unfavorable attitudes toward migrants might better realize the advantage
of voting for the radical right, and those with favorable attitudes know they should refrain
from doing so. Consequently, the effect of unfavorable attitudes toward migrants will be
stronger for the higher educated than for the lower educated. There is however no reason to
expect this for ethnic attitudes or for support for the radical right exclusively. In this line of
reasoning and regarding the radical right, we expect that all ideologically relevant attitudes,
such as migrant threat, the attachment to traditions, authoritarianism and an economically
right-wing position to be less strongly related to radical right-wing voting among the lower
educated than among the higher educated.
After ethnic threat (or unfavorable migrant attitudes), political distrust is often
considered as the second strongest predictor of radical right-wing voting behavior (Ivarsflaten
2008; Rydgren 2008). Lower educated people feel they are less well represented by the
political establishment and have lower levels of political trust. Moreover, the lower educated
might especially believe that they have more to gain from overthrowing the current distrusted
political elite (Mudde 2007). Even though the higher educated distrust the political elite, they
still might expect to profit more from politics because they are better represented (Wauters
2010). We assume that when protest motivations become more important in choosing for a
political party, the relative impact of ideological preferences becomes less important. Thus,
we expect the effect of political distrust to be greater (and hence) the effects of migrant threat
and other ideological attitudes to be less significant on radical right voting among the lower
educated than among the higher educated.
In sum, we expect hostile ethnic attitudes to have a smaller effect on radical right-wing
support among the lower educated either because they find it more difficult to choose a party
that is close to their ideology, and hence all ideological attitudes are less decisive for lower
educated people (hypothesis 1) or because political distrust is of pivotal importance for them
7
and thus ideologies become less relevant in the decision making process for these social strata
(hypothesis 2).
Data and measurements
We pooled the four rounds of the European Social Survey, from 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Given the relative small numbers of radical right-wing voters, the pooled ESS rounds provide
us with sufficient cases to test our hypotheses.
Dependent variable
Voting for the radical right versus voting for another party. For a classification of the radical
right, we followed previous research (Norris 2005; Mudde 2007). Table 1 presents the
percentage of radical right-wing voters in each country, and which parties fit the definition.
We only included these ESS rounds in countries where we were able to code a radical rightwing party. Countries without a radical right-wing party were excluded; Czech Republic,
Estonia, Finland, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Sweden, Ukraine, Cyprus and Latvia. Because we
are not interested in explaining levels of radical right-wing voting, but in moderation effects
between education and attitudes, we needed respondents voting for the radical right in each
country/round combination. Countries with 25 voters for a radical right-wing party or less
were also excluded: Croatia, the United Kingdom and Hungary. Non-voters and people who
either did not want to convey their preference or did not know which party to vote for were
excluded from the analyses. The lower educated scored higher on this non-voting; 42.8%
versus 29.7% among the highest educated. We will control for the effect on our results of
including or excluding this group from the category of people not voting for the radical right.
>>> INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE <<<
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Independent variables
We measured Education by the number of years respondents completed full-time education.
Since the number of respondents drops considerably above 20 years of education, we applied
an upper limit of 20 years. The years of education depend strongly on the educational systems
in the separate countries. To facilitate interpretation of the education effect across countries,
we constructed for each country a quartile measurement of education, referring to the lowest,
medium-low, medium-high and highest educated. Since stratification researchers have argued
that effects of educational attainment are mainly due to relative positions rather than to
absolute levels, i.e. that education is a positional good, we believe this is justified. We include
the separate categories of education as dummies in our model, because recent research
showed that sometime the medium lower educational category was most likely to vote for the
radical right (Billiet & De Witte 1995).1 We will replicate the pan-European model by
replacing the educational quartiles with years of education, as well as with the alternative
measure of education available in the ESS dataset, the ISCED coding (International Standard
Coding). Despite its international standardization, it has the disadvantage that in some
countries, some categories do not exist, or are hardly filled. However, given the centrality of
the measurement of education, we will present the pan-European models with the alternative
measures of education in Appendix 1.
The unfavorable attitudes toward migrants refer to perceived threat from immigrants,
which is central to contributions testing the mechanisms of ethnic competition theory.
Perceived threat from immigrants is measured by 3 items: ‘Immigration is bad or good for the
economy; ‘Immigrants make the country a worse or better place to live’; and ‘Country’s
cultural life is undermined or enriched by immigrants’ (alpha =.84). Because there is only one
item on economic threat and one item on cultural threat, and because of the strong
9
correlations between the items, we decided to include only one measure of migrant threat.
Previous research has established the measurement equivalence of these measures for the ESS
data (Meuleman, Davidov & Billiet 2009).
To capture distrust in politics, two measures were used that were measured on a 10point scale. One refers directly to distrust in politics, another one measures distrust in
politicians. Because the measures correlate strongly (r = .71), we combined them into a scale
of political distrust.
Economic right-wing position is measured by the question whether respondents think
that income differences should be reduced by government policies or not. We coded this
variable so that the higher score refers to the economic right (opposing income levelling). We
decided not to use the left-right self-placement scale. Respondents did not only use economic
issues to place themselves on this scale. Furthermore, in Eastern European countries the
meanings of Left and Right are blurred.
We tried to disentangle ‘importance of traditional way of life’, which would
correspond to a measure of nationalism, and authoritarianism, as measured by the items
‘importance of having a leader who says what to do and follow rules’, ‘importance of secure
and safe environment’, ‘importance of ‘. Our factor analysis found that all of these importance
measures referred to the same concept. We decided to use one measurement of
‘authoritarianism’, and not to use the proxy of nationalism as a separate item. We controlled
for gender, age, and church attendance.
Results
Before turning to the results of our model tests, we provide the backing details for the various
socio-political attitudes among the educational quartiles. We also provide these descriptive
statistics in order to evaluate the interaction effects included in our model testing; if the
10
attitudes are extremely skewed among the educational categories, then this could affect the
estimation and interpretation of interaction effects between education and the attitudes. If
there is no higher educated respondent perceiving ethnic threat, this could distort the
estimation of the interaction effect. Table 2 provides the percentage of respondents per
educational quartile supporting the respective attitudes. We took a score above 5 on the scales
from 0 to 10 to determine agreement. Table 2 replicates previous findings. We see that the
higher educated perceive less ethnic threat, are less authoritarian, position themselves more
often on the economic right, and are less distrustful of politics. Regarding this latter political
attitude, we evaluate the differences as rather small. While 56.2% of the lowest educated
quartile are distrustful of politics, the percentage reached 47.9% among the highest educated.
We conclude that there are educational related patterns, but that agreement and disagreement
simultaneously occurs with the attitudes among both highly and lowly educated respondents.
>>> INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE <<<
We perform two sets of analyses. First, we give a pan-European model, in which we
include the interaction between education and our attitudes. Second, we give the models for
the countries separately to specify which countries include the hypothesized interactions
effects.
Table 3 presents the overall model. In the first model, the findings from previous
research are replicated. We see that the lowest educated quartile is more likely to vote for the
radical right than the highest educated (B=.868). The parameter for the second quartile
(B=.843) does not differ significantly from the lowest educated. Also this quartile is much
more likely to vote for the radical right than the highest educated. The third quartile is more
11
likely to vote for the radical right than the highest educated quartile as well, but the parameter
(B=.489) is significantly smaller than those for the lowest educated quartiles. In this model we
also see that men, younger respondents and non-religious people are more likely to vote for
the radical right.
In the second model, the socio-political attitudes are included. Again, the findings
replicate previous studies, which showed that perceived threats from migrants and political
distrust increase the likelihood to vote for the radical right. The perceived migrant threat has
the largest effect on this likelihood (B = .280). Authoritarianism increases the likelihood to
vote the radical right as well (B=.035). Finally, respondents who are more economically
positioned to the right and who oppose government interventions to reduce income
inequalities, are more likely to vote the radical right (B = .040). By including the attitudes, the
effect of education becomes smaller. This is particularly due to the strong decrease of the
parameter for the lowest educated (from B=.868 to B=.416). To return to the discussion
between approaches addressing the relevance of social structure, some researchers would
argue that it shows the relative insignificance of education in explaining support for the
radical right. We would like to emphasize that there are differences between educational
levels in Europe related to radical right support which are partly interpreted by the differences
between the educational levels in perceived migration threats, authoritarianism, an economic
right position and political distrust.
For the test of our interaction hypotheses we refer to model 3. We expected the effects
of perceived migrant threat to be contingent on the level of education. Model 3 shows that
there is evidence for this expectation. The main effect of perceived migrant threat represents
the effect for the highest educational quartile. The effect is .308, larger than the average effect
among the whole sample that was reported in model 2 (B=.280). For the lowest quartile, the
effect of perceived migration threat is estimated to be .100 smaller, equaling to B=.208. The
12
lower the educational level, the smaller the impact of migrant threat. For authoritarianism, the
findings are similar, but more pronounced. Whereas the effect of authoritarianism is .127 for
the highest educated, its effect is estimated to be negative (B= -.020) for the lowest
educational quartile. Even for the third quartile, the effect of authoritarianism is significantly
smaller than for the highest educated (B= .127-.062 =.065). For the economic right-wing
position, we find that interaction terms are relatively small and non significant but, as
predicted, in the negative direction. Because of the non-significant latter findings, strictly
speaking, we have to refute both hypothesis 1 and 2, since these formulated that all
ideological predictors of radical right-wing voting were less relevant for the lower educated.
In the second hypothesis, we expected political distrust to have a stronger impact on
voting for the radical right among the lower educated. Whereas political distrust has an effect
of B=.186 for the highest educated quartile, its effect is significantly smaller for the lower
educated; it is estimated to be B=.116 for the lowest educated quartile, and B=.127 for the
medium-low quartile. Our findings thus provide more corroborative evidence for an effect of
political distrust in line with the ideological predictors of hypotheses 1, and incite us to reject
our second hypothesis. We tentatively conclude that socio-political attitudes are less relevant
for the lower educated in predicting their radical right vote – with the exception of economic
right-left placement – because they find it more difficult to find a party that is close to their
own socio-political placement. The findings are replicated when we use the linear
measurement of education in years, or the ordinal measurement of educational level in ISCED
coding (see Appendix 1). The findings are also replicated when we include in our analyses the
people who did not vote, refused to answer which party they voted, or did not give an answer
which party they voted for (see Appendix 2).
>>> INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE <<<
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The final model in Table 3 also reveals where we can situate the origin of the interaction
effect; the differences between the higher and lower educated in radical right-wing support
exist primarily when they do not support the attitudes. The third model shows large positive
parameters for the educational quartiles; these represent the differences between the
educational categories and the highest educated quartile when they score zero on the four
attitudes. For example, the parameter in the lowest quartile scores +2.328, from which we can
conclude that the lower educated are much more likely to vote for the radical right than the
higher educated when they do not support the attitudes. However, when the higher educated
and lower educated score the highest possible on for example ethnic threat and
authoritarianism, the differences between the two has become negligible (2.328+ (10*-.100) +
(10*-.147) = -.142).
We also tested to what extent the interaction effects are stable across the set of
analyzed countries. We estimated a model with the interactions for every country with more
than 50 radical right-wing voters. Table 4 presents the results. The interactions between
migrant threat and education appear in Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Greece and
Turkey2; the interactions between authoritarianism and education occur in Austria,
Switzerland, France, Israel and the Netherlands. The interaction between education and
political distrust is significant in Austria, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Only Norway
displays a small reversed effect of political distrust as postulated in hypothesis 2. Once again,
we found more support for hypothesis 1. Combined with the results from our pan-European
model, we may conclude that each of the patterns is not widespread, but that in all of the
seven Western countries with large radical right parties (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France,
14
the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland), one or more of the most relevant predictors of
radical right-wing voting are of less importance for the lower educated.
Another evolving pattern is that perceived migration threat plays a modest role in the
Eastern European countries. In the models, we presented interaction effects from which we
derive the attitude effects for each of the educational quartiles. Excluding the interactions (not
shown) determines a small main effect of migrant threat only in Poland, Russia and Slovenia .
And except for Bulgaria, in all these Eastern European countries, political distrust and
authoritarianism are no relevant explanations either.
We also mention a few country-specific findings. In the Netherlands, for the higher
educated, an economic right-wing position increases the likelihood of voting for the radical
right, whereas the effect is estimated to be negative for the lower educated. Hence, among the
lower educated in the Netherlands, economically left-wing people are more likely to be
attracted to the radical right-wing. The Dutch radical right Party for Freedom (PVV)
combines both traditional left-wing and right-wing economic issues. This could mean that
PVV voters find it easier to choose a party according to their economic attitudes. Future
research is warranted to elaborate on this. In Slovenia, no effect of an economic right-wing
position is found among the highest educated, whereas its effect is strongly negative for the
lowest educated.
>>> INSERT TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE <<<
Although we did not formulate a hypothesis about it, an evolving pattern seems to suggest
that when a radical right-wing party is larger, the interaction with education is stronger. To
test this relation we plotted the interaction term of the lowest educated concerning migrant
threat and authoritarianism against support for the party (in our data). On the basis of these 17
15
cases, we indeed found a negative relation (r = -.26), but the association was not strong
enough to reach significance, and is influenced by the large radical right-wing support in
Switzerland and Norway.
Conclusions and discussion
Remarkably, in all Western European countries with relatively strong support for the radical
right, the main socio-political attitudinal predictors are less strong among the lower educated.
Whereas perceived migrant threat and authoritarianism turn out to explain why lower
educated people are more likely to vote for the radical right than the higher educated, both
attitudes are much smaller predictors of radical right-wing voting among the lower educated
than among the higher educated.
One of the interpretations we tested was that all ideological explanations have a
smaller influence on the radical right among the lower educated. The only effect that did not
depend on the educational level as predicted was economic policy position. Most scholars
only list migrant threat and authoritarianism as key ideological issues of the radical right, and
not so much its economic policy position. Future research, for example on voting behavior for
other political parties, should test whether specific core issues influence party choice to a
lesser degree the lower educated than the higher educated. Such research could determine if
the higher educated are better able to select parties according to specific key issues they relate
to. For example, we could then expect that environmental concerns predict Green voting more
among higher than lower educated people.
Generally, we found that protest explanations are not more important for the lower
educated (a notable exception is Norway) than for the higher educated. We expected protest
explanations to compensate for the smaller effects among the lower educated. This hypothesis
was not supported; we even found that protest explanations are also of larger relevance among
16
the higher educated than among the lower educated. We thus find more support for our idea
that the lower educated are less skilled in deriving their party preference from their own
attitudes, than for the idea that ideologies are less important because protest explanations are a
substitute for the ideological explanations among the lower. However, since economic rightwing positioning did not prove to be less relevant for the lower educated, alternative
explanations should be developed and tested.
Lower educated people who did not subscribe to the relevant socio-political attitudes
were nevertheless relatively likely to vote for the radical right. When higher educated and
lower educated respondents subscribed to radical right ideologies, they not differ that much in
their support for the radical right. The lower educated are perhaps not so much less skilled,
but they perceive different norms or habits than the higher educated. From previous research
we know that class and group norms influence people’s attitudes in voting (Need 1999;
Tolsma, De Graaf & Quillian 2009). When the lower educated more commonly vote for the
radical right, we expect lower educated networks supporting the radical right. Within these
groups, even people not sharing the radical right’s ideology would still be likely to vote for a
radical right-wing party. Such network explanations are food for thought for future studies.
Previously, Billiet (1995) showed that effects of attitudes on voting behavior are conditional
of one’s religiosity, providing additional evidence that group norms come into play in the
association between attitudes and party choice.
Previous research on radical right support has been mainly restricted to Western
Europe. Much less is published on explaining radical right-wing voting in Eastern European
countries. The core defining issues to classify the radical right – nativism, authoritarianism
and political protest – hardly affect the vote for the radical right in Eastern Europe. One of the
limitations of the ESS data is that it focuses on perceptions of migration, and does not capture
the relations between ethnic groups residing longer in the country. Ethnic threat, broader
17
measured, and not restricted to migrant threat, is expected to affect the radical right-wing
support in Eastern Europe as well (Poppe 2001; Evans & Need 2002), given the centrality of
ethnic minorities and gypsies within the radical right-wing program of Eastern European
countries. Though we value the ESS as one of the best cross-national datasets, regarding the
measurements of ethnic relations, a Western European standard seems to be applied.
In this contribution, we have shown that the impact of negative evaluations of
migrants – and other party ideologies - on radical right voting is less for the lower educated,
and that this phenomenon occurs in many (Western) European countries where the radical
right has managed to become an enduring political force, attracting a large share of the votes.
Explaining how lower educated people find it more difficult to relate their attitudes to the
party outcome deserves attention in future studies. It is a viable hypothesis, but alternative
explanations, and most notably those derived from social norms considerations, should be
tested against it.
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22
Table 1. Participation of countries in the four ESS rounds, the selected radical right-wing
parties, and support for the parties in the pooled dataset.
Country
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Switzerland
Germany
Denmark
France
UK
Greece
Croatia
Hungary
Israel
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Romania
Russia
Slovenia
Slovakia
Turkey
EES1 ESS2 ESS3
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
o
x
o
o
x
o
o
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
ESS4 Party
FPÖ; BZÖ
x
VB; FN
x
Ataka
x
SVP; SD; FdU; FP; LT
x
Rep; DVU; NPD
x
DF; FkP
x
FN
o
BNP
x
LAOS
x
HSP
x
Jobbik
x
YB
LN; FT
x
LPF; PVV
x
FP
x
LPR
x
PRM
x
LDPR
x
SNS
x
SNS
x
MHP
%
n far right
6.7
9.0
9.1
24.9
1.2
8.5
5.7
1.0
2.6
3.2
0.7
6.4
3.9
7.0
16.0
3.7
4.9
6.5
4.6
9.6
7.7
238
447
150
878
83
407
245
15
67
25
12
97
40
423
757
132
127
172
130
195
96
x = Country in ESS round, and radical right-wing party coded; o = Country in ESS round, no
radical right-wing party coded; blanks = country not in respective ESS round
23
Table 2. Agreement with the attitudes and percentage of voters not voting, not knowing which
party to vote for, and refusing to answer which party to vote for by educational quartile.
%
Migrant
threat
Education
Lowest quartile 1
Medium-low quartile 2
Medium-high quartile 3
Highest quartile 4
55.0
43.1
34.5
23.8
% Right- %
wing
Political
position distrust
% Authoritarian
70.2
60.6
52.4
48.1
24
22.2
28.3
33.5
37.8
56.2
53.4
51.2
47.9
Table 3. Effect parameters from a multilevel model predicting radical right-wing voting,
including interactions between education and socio-political attitudes.
model 1
b
Education highest quartile 4 (= ref)
Lowest quartile 1
Medium-low quartile 2
Medium-high quartile 3
0.868 ***
0.843 ***
0.489 ***
s.e.
0.053
0.046
0.050
model 2
b
s.e.
model 3
b
s.e.
0.416 ***
0.531 ***
0.313 ***
0.056
0.048
0.051
2.328 ***
1.662 ***
0.897 ***
0.224
0.198
0.214
0.280
0.035
0.040
0.143
0.009
0.007
0.006
0.008
0.308
0.127
0.053
0.186
***
***
***
***
0.020
0.017
0.013
0.019
Educ. quartile 1 * Migrant threat
Educ. quartile 2 * Migrant threat
Educ. quartile 3 * Migrant threat
-0.100 ***
-0.016
-0.009
0.026
0.024
0.026
Educ. quartile 1 * Authoritarianism
Educ. quartile 2 * Authoritarianism
Educ. quartile 3 * Authoritarianism
-0.147 ***
-0.128 ***
-0.062 **
0.022
0.020
0.022
Educ. quartile 1 * Economic right
Educ. quartile 2 * Economic right
Educ. quartile 3 * Economic right
-0.028
-0.010
-0.020
0.019
0.017
0.018
Educ. quartile 1 * Political distrust
Educ. quartile 2 * Political istrust
Educ. quartile 3 * Political distrust
-0.070 ***
-0.059 *
-0.026
0.024
0.023
0.025
0.033
0.001
0.019
0.404 ***
-0.009 ***
-0.171 ***
0.033
0.001
0.019
0.248
-6.189
0.737 ***
1
0.248
Perceived migrant threat (0-10)
Authoritarianism (0-10)
Economic right (0-10)
Political distrust (0-10)
Gender: men
Age (0-80)
Church attendance (0-3)
0.398 ***
-0.007 ***
-0.168 ***
0.032
0.001
0.018
***
***
***
***
0.418 ***
-0.010 ***
-0.160 ***
Intercept
-3.03
-5.485
Var level 2: Country
0.457 ***
0.154
0.74 ***
Var level 1: Individual
1
1
N = 63935; *** p<.001; ** p <.01; * p < .05; PQL, second order estimation
Source: ESS 2002-2008
25
Table 4. Country level results of relevance of interactions between education and sociopolitical attitudes to predict radical right-wing voting.
Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Switzerland Germany
Denmark
b
b
b
b
b
b
Educational attainment
Quartile 1: Low
2.93 **
3.61 ***
-4.07 *
2.62 ***
5.03
4.15 ***
Quartile 2: Medium-low
1.68 ~
3.18 **
-2.19
1.61 **
4.97
4.28 ***
Quartile 3: Medium-high
1.42
2.04 *
0.64
1.70 **
4.54
2.75 **
Perceived migrant threat
0.32 **
0.46 ***
0.01
0.54 ***
0.41 *
0.75 ***
Authoritarianism
0.19 *
0.09
-0.09
0.17 ***
0.15
0.14 ~
Economic right
0.11 ~
-0.01
-0.08
0.14 ***
-0.12
Political distrust
0.19 *
Educ. quartile 1 * Migrant threat
0.13
-0.33 **
0.09
-0.26 ***
Educ. quartile 2 * Migrant threat
0.07
-0.03
0.07
-0.01
0.16
-0.06
-0.02
Educ. quartile 3 * Migrant threat
0.39 ***
0.39 ***
0.07
0.75 *
0.04
0.16
-0.09
-0.45 ***
0.04
-0.38 **
-0.08
0.18
Educ. quartile 1 * Authoritarianism
-0.26 **
-0.08
0.34 **
-0.09
-0.26
-0.13
Educ. quartile 2 * Authoritarianism
-0.20 *
-0.15
0.03
-0.13 **
-0.26
-0.14
Educ. quartile 3 * Authoritarianism
-0.21 *
-0.02
0.07
-0.11 ~
-0.28
-0.07
Educ. quartile 1 * Economic right
-0.12
0.01
0.07
-0.10
0.18
-0.06
Educ. quartile 2 * Economic right
-0.06
0.07
0.03
-0.04
0.12
-0.08
Educ. quartile 3 * Economic right
-0.08
0.05
0.06
-0.06
0.11
-0.04
Educ. quartile 1 * Political distrust
-0.26 *
-0.12
0.01
0.03
-0.33
-0.03
Educ. quartile 2 * Political distrust
-0.12
-0.24 *
0.12
-0.02
-0.37
-0.16 ~
Educ. quartile 3 * Political distrust
-0.13
-0.22 *
-0.16
-0.06
-0.45
-0.03
26
-0.33 **
Table 3 continued.
France
Greece
Israel
Netherlands
Norway
b
b
b
b
b
Educational attainment
Quartile 1: Low
3.49 ***
Quartile 2: Medium-low
1.63 ~
3.42 ***
2.71 ***
-1.20
Quartile 3: Medium-high
2.82 ~
-2.45
2.92 ***
1.50 *
1.41
1.32
-0.02
1.26 ~
0.38
Perceived migrant threat
0.24 *
0.38 **
-0.10
0.30 ***
0.59 ***
Authoritarianism
0.23 **
0.08
0.04
0.16 **
0.06
Economic right
0.06
0.09
0.11
0.11 **
0.13 *
Political distrust
0.28 **
0.11
-0.08
0.32 ***
0.04
-0.31 *
-0.17
0.02
-0.31 **
0.00
-0.01
-0.23 *
Educ. quartile 1 * Migrant threat
-0.02
Educ. quartile 2 * Migrant threat
0.07
-0.11
Educ. quartile 3 * Migrant threat
2.67 *
0.02
-0.19
0.02
Educ. quartile 1 * Authoritarianism
-0.17 *
-0.08
-0.39 *
-0.21 **
-0.11
Educ. quartile 2 * Authoritarianism
-0.26 **
0.00
0.01
-0.20 **
-0.02
Educ. quartile 3 * Authoritarianism
-0.09
-0.09
0.02
-0.06
Educ. quartile 1 * Economic right
-0.02
-0.14
-0.08
-0.18 **
-0.05
Educ. quartile 2 * Economic right
-0.01
0.06
0.08
-0.09 ~
-0.04
Educ. quartile 3 * Economic right
-0.08
-0.09
-0.03
-0.10 ~
-0.09
Educ. quartile 1 * Political distrust
-0.27 *
-0.03
0.07
-0.24 *
0.16
Educ. quartile 2 * Political distrust
-0.06
0.20
0.25
-0.18 *
0.21 *
Educ. quartile 3 * Political distrust
-0.09
0.06
0.08
-0.17 ~
0.16
27
0.13
-0.04
0.05
Table 3 continued.
Poland
Romania
Russia
Slovenia
Slovakia
Turkey
b
b
b
b
b
b
Educational attainment
Quartile 1: Low
0.36
-0.63
Quartile 2: Medium-low
0.80
-0.53
0.99
Quartile 3: Medium-high
-0.85
-1.48
-0.52
0.16 *
4.20 **
-2.31 *
0.55
2.04
0.10
0.64
0.49
-1.59
1.52
Perceived migrant threat
0.26 *
Authoritarianism
0.12
-0.03
-0.09
-0.05
-0.10
0.04
Economic right
-0.05
-0.08
-0.08
0.04
-0.07
0.04
Political distrust
-0.02
0.09
0.07
0.13
-0.06
0.02
Educ. quartile 1 * Migrant threat
-0.10
-0.10
-0.11
-0.11
0.07
-0.09
Educ. quartile 2 * Migrant threat
0.08
-0.04
-0.07
-0.05
0.01
-0.25 *
Educ. quartile 3 * Migrant threat
-0.01
-0.12
0.00
0.06
-0.14
-0.24 *
Educ. quartile 1 * Authoritarianism
-0.04
-0.07
0.04
-0.20
0.19
-0.22
Educ. quartile 2 * Authoritarianism
-0.03
0.09
0.03
-0.12
0.05
-0.03
Educ. quartile 3 * Authoritarianism
0.07
-0.08
0.20 *
0.03
0.16 ~
0.04
0.06
0.12
-0.05
0.20 ~
-0.06
Educ. quartile 1 * Economic right
-0.08
-0.03
0.17 ~
-0.40 *
0.15
-0.05
Educ. quartile 2 * Economic right
-0.09
-0.09
0.15 ~
-0.03
0.04
-0.10
Educ. quartile 3 * Economic right
0.08
0.17
0.08
-0.28 *
0.01
-0.03
Educ. quartile 1 * Political distrust
0.16
0.15
0.06
-0.23
0.03
0.08
Educ. quartile 2 * Political distrust
-0.08
0.06
-0.09
-0.11
-0.06
Educ. quartile 3 * Political distrust
0.07
0.15
-0.01
-0.01
Note: *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05
Source: ESS 2002-2008
28
0.19 ~
0.17 ~
0.10
Appendix 1. Effect parameters of radical right-wing voting, with educational quartiles
replaced by years of education, and ISCED level of education.
Years of education (0-20)
ISCED level of education (0-6)
Perceived migration threat (0-10)
Authoritarianism (0-10)
Right-wing economic position (0-10)
Political distrust (0-10)
model 3a
model 3b
b
s.e.
b
s.e.
-0.253 ***
0.019
-0.779 ***
0.057
***
***
*
***
0.021
0.018
0.016
0.020
0.002
0.002
0.002
0.002
0.050 ***
0.038 ***
0.003
0.023 ***
0.007
0.006
0.005
0.006
0.032
0.001
0.019
0.423 ***
-0.010 ***
-0.162 ***
0.033
0.001
0.019
Var level 2: Country
0.749 ***
0.251
0.783 ***
Var level 1: Individual
1
1
Note: N=63935. *** p <.001; ** p < .01; * p <.05. Source: ESS 2002-2008
0.264
Education * Perc. migrant threat
Education * Authoritarianism
Education * Right-wing economic
Education * Political distrust
Gender: men
Age (0-80)
Church attendance (0-3)
0.075 **
-0.100 ***
0.013
0.055 *
0.027
0.024
0.021
0.025
0.017 ***
0.011 ***
0.002
0.007 ***
0.422 ***
-0.010 ***
-0.164 ***
29
0.125
-0.083
0.033
0.075
Appendix 2. Effect parameters of radical right-wing voting (1), including voters not voting,
not knowing which party to vote for, and refusing to answer which party to vote for in
category 0.
Years of education (0-20)
ISCED level of education (0-6)
Perceived migration threat (0-10)
Authoritarianism (0-10)
Right-wing economic position (0-10)
Political distrust (0-10)
model 3c
model 3d
b
s.e.
b
s.e.
-0.191 ***
0.018
-0.498 ***
0.052
***
***
*
***
0.020
0.017
0.015
0.018
0.002
0.002
0.002
0.002
0.040 ***
0.029 ***
0.004
0.015 ***
0.006
0.005
0.004
0.006
0.032
0.001
0.019
0.454 ***
0.006 ***
-0.111 ***
0.032
0.001
0.018
Var level 2: Country
0.644 ***
0.217
0.649 ***
Var level 1: Individual
1
1
Note: N=95080. *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05; Source: ESS 2002-2008
0.219
Education * Perc. migrant threat
Education * Authoritarianism
Education * Right-wing economic
Education * Political distrust
Gender: men
Age (0-80)
Church attendance (0-3)
0.083 ***
-0.083 ***
0.014
0.007
0.026
0.022
0.020
0.024
0.014 ***
0.010 ***
0.002
0.007 ***
0.453 ***
0.005 ***
-0.112 ***
30
0.133
-0.056
0.031
0.045
Notes
1
The reason to continue with the quartiles is that we also give the country specific results. We use here the
number of years, or the ISCED classification demands country-specific recoding because for different countries,
different cells are not filled. For example, in Norway, hardly any respondent scores lower than 8 years of
education. Concerning ISCED, category 1 is not filled in some countries, and category 3 is not filled in Finland.
2
Remarkably, we do not replicate the findings for the Netherlands from 2002. In the study from Lubbers &
Güveli, interaction terms were tested one by one. Here we include more attitudes and interacting them with
education at once. The models also varied with respect to other indicators. Finally, we used four waves of the
ESS while they had only used the ESS of round 1.
31