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ABSTRACT
This article focuses on the prevalence of anti-immigration attitudes among the far-right electorate. Drawing on the distinction between the predictive power of immigration concerns, and the question of how widespread these concerns are among the far-right voter pool, we proceed in two steps. First, we assess the extent to which anti-immigration attitudes are a necessary condition for voting far-right; and second, we examine whether far-right voters with different levels of anti-immigration attitudes exhibit similar individual and attitudinal characteristics. Using data from the 8th wave of the European Social Survey (ESS) we find that, surprisingly, anti-immigration attitudes are not a necessary condition for voting for the far-right as approximately one third of far-right voters have no concerns over immigration. We further show that far-right voters with different levels of immigration concerns have different profiles when it comes to other predictors of the far right-vote including ideological affinity, attachment to the EU and government satisfaction. Our contribution is significant as we suggest that there are different routes to voting for the far right by groups with different grievances, including non- immigration related.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 To capture the influence of fears about immigration on the far-right vote, we use a dummy variable coded 1 if the respondent voted for the far right and 0 otherwise. To measure our independent variable, we include both economic and cultural fears, as well as an interaction between the two. Other controls include the following variables: education, age, gender, place of residence, religiosity, professional activity, self-placement on a left-right scale, attachment to the European Union, satisfaction with the government; participation in social/ civic activities; and perceived possibility to influence the political system (Norris Citation2005; Allen Citation2017) (see in appendix for the operationalisation). Because our dependent variable is binary (coded 1 if respondents vote for far-right parties and 0 otherwise) we carry out logistic regression analysis (Long, Long, and Freese Citation2006).
2 Asking questions about attitudinal, political, and demographic factors, the ESS allows for individual level analyses across cases and across time. We restrict our analysis to the 8th wave, of the ESS (Citation2018). Using the ESS also follows a long tradition of studies in the fields of far-right parties and voting behaviour (e.g. Ivarsflaten Citation2008; Lucassen and Lubbers Citation2012; Rydgren Citation2008; Oesch Citation2008).
3 The version of the ESS (Citation2018) data we use includes 23 countries. We excluded Russia and Israel because they are not in Europe. We also excluded Ireland, Iceland, Luxembourg, and Spain because there was no far right party at the time of data collection in 2016 that was sufficiently strong to be listed as a vote choice in the ESS.
4 We test whether the assumption of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) hold: a Suest- Hausmann test of IIA confirms that this is not a problem.
5 For some of the statistically significant variables (e.g. satisfaction with the EU), the confidence intervals overlap between our main categories (i.e. voters with immigration fears and voters without immigration fears). However, this is unavoidable if for one type of voter the likelihood of voting for the far-right increases, while it decreases for another type.