Electoral fortunes of social democratic parties: do second dimension positions matter?

ABSTRACT

The dramatic decline in vote shares on the mainstream left in many recent elections has led to a renewed discussion about a crisis of Social Democracy. One popular argument is that Social Democratic decline is the result of these parties' liberal cultural positions and pro-EU stance, with both topics increasingly salient for their traditional voters, particularly among the working class. However, we lack comparative evidence testing this argument. In this paper, we combine CHES data on party positions with ESS survey data to analyze the electoral effects of Social Democratic parties' second dimension and EU positions. In addition, we focus on whether support from different socio-economic groups is sensitive to these positions. In contrast to much public debate, we find that more authoritarian/nationalist and more anti-EU positions are if anything associated with lower rather than greater electoral support for social democratic parties.

KEYWORDS:

• European integration
• immigration
• social democratic parties
• party competition
• elections

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Sara Hobolt and Toni Rodon for editing and coordinating this special issue. The authors would also like to thank audiences at the 9th European Political Science Association Conference, Mannheim University, Waseda University and the University of York for useful comments on earlier versions of this article.

Data availability statement

The data to replicate the findings of this are stored via Harvard Dataverse under: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CQTBFD

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Tarik Abou-Chadi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich. His research focuses on party competition, elections and the transformation of politics in post-industrial societies. His research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science and the European Journal of Political Research.

Markus Wagner is a Professor in the Department of Government at the University of Vienna, Austria. His research focuses on the role of issues and ideology in vote choice and party competition. His research has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics and the British Journal of Political Science.

ORCID

Tarik Abou-Chadi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5529-2616

Markus Wagner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0036-1266