Contextual explanations of radical right-wing party support in Sweden: a multilevel analysis

ABSTRACT

With the aim of studying the role of contextual factors for explaining within-country variation in the vote share of the radical right-wing party, the Sweden Democrats, in the 2014 Swedish election, we specify and test hypotheses pertaining to social marginality, ethnic threat, the contact hypothesis, and the halo effect. We study the variation in the electoral share of the Sweden Democrats at two different levels simultaneously by performing multilevel analyses to account for the ways in which voting districts are clustered within municipalities. The main finding from our analyses is the support for the ethnic threat hypothesis, where the vote share of the Sweden Democrats is significantly higher in those areas that have seen an increase in the foreign-born population, and to some extent also in ethnically diverse areas, contradicting previous research on ethnic minority presence in fine-grained contexts. The expectation that the vote share for the Sweden Democrats should be higher in socioeconomic marginalized districts is partly supported, but we find no evidence of a halo effect, where ethnically homogeneous areas that are geographically close to heterogeneous districts were expected to have a higher vote share for the Sweden Democrats.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic competition
• group position threat
• social marginalization
• radical right
• voting support

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Blue collar workers include the proportion of the working age population employed in agriculture, forestry, fishing, manufacturing, mining, energy, environmental activities, and construction. The measurement does not enable us to exclude those in managerial position but includes all individuals employed within these professions.

2 The results from a multilevel analysis when including all variables simultaneously and an unweighted dependent variable are shown in Model 6, Table A2 of the Appendix.

3 The number is based on unweighted data. The election survey is distributed to voters outside of polling stations around the time for elections to the Swedish parliament, the EU parliament and referendums. The survey is carried out in cooperation between the Swedish public service television company (SVT), the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

4 We also tested two other weighted measurements, where the vote share was adjusted upward when the proportion of residents born outside of Sweden or the Nordic countries increases. Using these measurements did not alter the main results.

5 We also tried an alternative approach where we included the proportion of foreign-born within the district and the share in the neighbouring district as two separate variables and as an interaction, the results were very similar to those presented before.

6 Lindgren and Vernby (2016) focused on a shorter time span (between two elections), which means the 15 percent limit is stricter in our case. We therefore tested also for higher limits for change, with the same results.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet [grant number 1369209].

Notes on contributors

Jens Rydgren

Jens Rydgren is Professor of Sociology at Stockholm University. He is working within the research areas of political sociology, ethnic relations, and social networks. His articles have appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, and European Journal of Political Research. He has published several books on radical right-wing politics, and in 2018 he was the editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Radical Right (OUP).

Maria Tyrberg

Maria Tyrberg is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg. Her research is concerned with radical right-wing party support, contextual effects, and political integration. Her articles have appeared in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Political Studies, Journal of Youth Studies, and Public Administration.