Gender, populist attitudes, and voting: explaining the gender gap in voting for populist radical right and populist radical left parties

Figures & data

Table 1. Parties’ classification.

	Populist radical right	Populist radical left
Austria	Austrian Freedom Party	‒
	Alliance for the Future of Austria
Denmark	Danish People’s Party	‒
Finland	True Finns	‒
France	National Front	‒
Germany	‒	The Left
Greece	Popular Orthodox Rally	Coalition of the Radical Left
	Golden Dawn
Italy	Northern League	Five Star Movement
Netherlands	Party for Freedom	Socialist Party
Spain	‒	We Can^1

Notes: All other parties present in the data were considered not populist. Party classification is based on Van Kessel (2015) with the exception of three parties. These are included according to the following studies: the Dutch Socialist Party (Lucardie and Voerman 2012; Akkerman et al. 2014; Otjes and Louwerse 2015), Podemos (Gómez-Reino and Iván Llamazares 2015), and Golden Dawn (Ellinas 2013). Golden Dawn is a borderline case, it is clearly right-wing and anti-migration, but not per se populist. We have rerun several analyses removing Golden Dawn voters from the sample, which gave similar results. See note 5 regarding the classification of the Five Star Movement.

¹ Podemos was only included in two of the sampled dependent variables: the last European elections and ‘what would you vote today’, and not for the last national elections because their rise took place afterwards.

Figure 1. Gender differences in PRR and PRL voting behaviour.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics on explanatory variables for men and women separately.

	Mean men	s.d. men	Mean women	s.d. women
Populist attitudes (0–10)	4.21	2.29	4.13	2.20
Strongly populist (proportion 8–10)	0.08	0.28	0.06	0.24
Economic left‒right position (0–10)	4.43	2.14	4.34	1.96
Anti-migration attitudes (0–10)	5.65	2.92	5.52	2.86
Law and order attitudes (0–10)	5.00	2.84	5.38	2.72
Anti-EU attitudes (0–10)	4.67	2.36	4.75	2.16
Occupational status
Not employed: unemployed	0.05	0.22	0.06	0.23
Not employed: other	0.31	0.46	0.42	0.49
Employed: manual labour	0.09	0.29	0.02	0.16
Self-employed: small business	0.04	0.19	0.03	0.18
Employed: other	0.51	0.50	0.47	0.50
Age (18 = 0)	32.7	15.9	33.7	16.2

Note: Descriptives are based on cases that had valid scores on all variables, including the votes variables; n = 3360 (1683 women and 1519 men); weighted (w1).

Source: EES 2014.

Table 3. Regression models explaining voting for a populist party.

	Populist radical right (0–3)			Populist radical left (0–2)
	1	2	3	4	5	6
Sex (1 = woman)	−0.153***	−0.124***	−0.113**	−0.016	−0.016	−0.010
	(0.04)	(0.03)	(0.03)	(0.03)	(0.03)	(0.03)
Populism			0.08***			0.09***
			(0.01)			(0.01)
Economic left‒right		0.01	0.01		−0.06***	−0.05***
		(0.01)	(0.01)		(0.01)	(0.01)
Anti-migration		0.05***	0.05***		−0.00	0.00
		(0.01)	(0.01)		(0.02)	(0.01)
Law and order		0.01	0.01		−0.02***	−0.02**
		(0.01)	(0.01)		(0.01)	(0.01)
Anti EU integration		0.15***	0.11***		0.06***	0.01
		(0.01)	(0.01)		(0.01)	(0.01)
Occupation (ref = employed other)
Not employed: unemployed		−0.01	−0.04		0.15*	0.11
		(0.08)	(0.08)		(0.07)	(0.06)
Not employed: other		0.05	0.04		0.06	0.04
		(0.04)	(0.04)		(0.04)	(0.04)
Employed: manual labour		0.47***	0.45***		0.15*	0.13
		(0.07)	(0.07)		(0.08)	(0.07)
Self-employed: small business		0.29**	0.28**		0.13	0.14
		(0.10)	(0.10)		(0.08)	(0.08)
Age		−0.004**	−0.003**		−0.004***	−0.003**
		(0.00)	(0.00)		(0.00)	(0.00)
Intercept	0.60***	−0.55***	−0.84***	0.30***	0.55***	0.30***
	(0.06)	(0.09)	(0.09)	(0.04)	(0.08)	(0.08)
Adjusted R square	0.04	0.24	0.25	0.06	0.12	0.17
N	2443			1908

Note: All models are fixed effect models. The countries include are: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands (PRR), and Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain (PRL). The intercept thus only holds for one country, when respondents score 0 on all variables; it says very little and has not been included either.

^* p < 0.05

^** p < 0.01

^*** p < 0.001.

Source: EES voter survey 2014.

Table 4. The impact of populism on the gender gap per country.

	Populist radical right			Populist radical left
	Before entering populism	After inclusion populism	Difference	Before entering populism	After inclusion populism	Difference
Austria	−0.180^**	−0.170	−6%	n.a.	n.a.
Denmark	−0.029	−0.022	−24%	n.a.	n.a.
Finland	−0.216*	−0.205	−5%	n.a.	n.a.
France	n.a.	n.a.		n.a.	n.a.
Germany	n.a.	n.a.		−0.131*	−0.109	−17%
Greece	−0.176	−0.129	−27%	0.127	0.112	−12%
Italy	n.a.	n.a.		0.070	0.063	−10%
Netherlands	n.a.	n.a.		−0.118*	−0.116*	−2%
Spain	n.a.	n.a.		−0.114	−0.086	−25%

Notes: Only de B coefficients are given here; the underlying models are the same as models 2, 3, 5 and 6 in Table 2, but then estimated per country.

^* p < 0.05

^** p < 0.10

n.a. indicates there was no considerable PRR or PRL in that country, or in the cases of France, Italy, and The Netherlands that they did not meet the criteria of number of PRR voters to allow separate estimates (>40).

Table

Total variance explained
Factor	Initial Eigenvalues			Extraction sums of squared loadings			Rotation sums of squared loadings^a
	Total	% of variance	Cumulative %	Total	% of variance	Cumulative %	Total
1	3.970	30.542	30.542	3.599	27.685	27.685	3.054
2	2.405	18.500	49.042	1.919	14.764	42.448	2.091
3	1.057	8.128	57.170
4	0.940	7.228	64.398
5	0.923	7.102	71.500
6	0.811	6.236	77.736
7	0.654	5.033	82.768
8	0.552	4.243	87.011
9	0.539	4.149	91.160
10	0.372	2.860	94.020
11	0.330	2.538	96.558
12	0.251	1.934	98.492
13	0.196	1.508	100.000
Extraction Method: Principal Axis Factoring.
Note: ^aWhen factors are correlated, sums of squared loadings cannot be added to obtain a total variance.

Table

KMO and Bartlett’s test
Kaiser‒Meyer‒Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy		0.797
Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity	Approx. Chi-Square	11992.403
	df	78
	Sig.	0.000

Table

Structure matrix
	Factor
	1	2
qpp9_1 You trust the (NATIONALITY PARLIAMENT) / QPP9 For each of the following statements, please tell me to what extent it corresponds or not to your attitude or opinion.	0.776
qpp9_2 The (NATIONALITY PARLIAMENT) takes the concerns of (NATIONALITY) citizens into consideration / QPP9 For each of the following statements, please tell me to what extent it corresponds or not to your attitude or opinion.	0.785
qpp9_3 Sometimes politics and government seem so complicated that a person like you can’t really understand what’s going on / QPP9 For each of the following statements, please tell me to what extent it corresponds or not to your attitude or opinion.
qpp21 dichotomised: Do you consider yourself to be close to any particular political party? [yes/no]
d71_1 National political matters / D71 When you get together with friends or relatives, would you say you discuss frequently, occasionally or never about...?		0.800
d71_2 European political matters / D71 When you get together with friends or relatives, would you say you discuss frequently, occasionally or never about...?		0.785
d71_3 Local political matters / D71 When you get together with friends or relatives, would you say you discuss frequently, occasionally or never about...?		0.596
d72_1 My voice counts in the EU / D72 Please tell me to what extent you agree or disagree with each of the following statements.	0.751
d72_2 My voice counts in (OUR COUNTRY) / D72 Please tell me to what extent you agree or disagree with each of the following statements.	0.732
qp6_2 You trust the institutions of the EU / QP6 For each of the following statements, please tell me to what extent it corresponds or not to your attitude or opinion.	0.645
qp6_9 You are very interested in politics / QP6 For each of the following statements, please tell me to what extent it corresponds or not to your attitude or opinion.		0.506
qp6_4 The European Parliament takes into consideration the concerns of European citizens / QP6 For each of the following statements, please tell me to what extent it corresponds or not to your attitude or opinion.	0.720
qp6_7 It is very important for you which particular candidates have been elected as MEPs in the European Parliament / QP6 For each of the following statements, please tell me to what extent it corresponds or not to your attitude or opinion.
Extraction Method: Principal Axis Factoring. Rotation Method: Oblimin with Kaiser Normalisation.

Table

	Populist radical right					Populist radical left
Model	Pooled	AU	DK	FI	GR	Pooled	GE	NL	SP
Presented model	−9%	−6%	−24%	−5%	−27%	−38%^3	−17%	−2%	−25%
Variations on populism variable
Alternative 4-item populist attitudes scale with only divide indicators	−7%	−2%	−31%	−3%	−32%	−19%^3	−11%	−3%	−15%
Populism as a dummy (8 or higher = 1)	−9%	+11%	−10%	−11%	−41%	−44%^3	−5%	−3%	−7%
Variations on voting variable and estimation technique
Multinomial^1: PRR/PRL at least ones vs not populist	−8%	−^2	−^2	−^2	−11%	−^3	−^2	+4%	−^2
Logistic regression^1: if national election were held today	−3%	−14%	−4%	+2%	−17%	−^3	−4%	+6%	−21%
Logistic regression^1: last national election	−1%	−6%	−2%	+1%	−1%	−^3	+4%	−1%	−^4
Logistic regression^1: last European vote	−6%	−5%	+1%	−2%	−4%	−^3	−6%	+3%	−21%
OLS on vote choices including propensity	−7%	−2%	−8%	−6%	−30%	−^3	−18%	−3%	−29%
OLS on vote choices only included national election indicators	−10%	−4%	−^3	−7%	−28%	−10%^34	−20%	+1%	−^4