Read Recapturing the Reluctant Radical: how to win back Europe’s populist vote by Catherine Fieschi, Marley Morris and Lila Caballero Page 4
The reluctant radicals: a powerful force
The following table shows the distribution of the four groups among each country’s electorate. For the European Social Survey data, we use data from just the last round.
Distribution of the electorate by country
Source: Data from ESS round 5
It is clear from this table that there are numerous potential votes for RPPs. This is less the case in Scandinavia, where anti-immigration views are less pronounced and where the views that are present tend to be absorbed by RPPs. But in other countries hostility to immigration extends far beyond the actual voters for RPPs.
But, exploring the RPP electorate, we find that in most countries the reluctant radicals make up at least half of those who vote for RPPs. In some cases – such as France – this figure is higher, while in Hungary the figure is relatively low. Reluctant radicals as defined here clearly make up a significant proportion of RPP voters. This is natural given declining levels of party attachment in Europe more generally. Further, RPPs are for the most part new parties that have had little time to build up strong connections with voters. The voters who are easiest to bring back into the mainstream make up a large proportion of the populist right. Targeting the reluctant radicals is therefore likely to be a powerful strategy for tackling RPPs.
Who are they?
We first run a simple logistic regression to determine what socio-demographic factors influence the likelihood of being a reluctant radical, pooling together all five rounds of the ESS. We include gender, age, education level, unemployment and a measure for blue-collar workers in our analysis.30 We also look at cross-tabulations for the last round of the ESS where sample size permits. We performed similar analyses for Britain and Italy using the alternative datasets discussed above.
Not just a young man's game
The gender gap with respect to right populist voting has been well documented.31 But our results tell us that the gender gap is in fact barely present for reluctant radicals in a number of countries.
In Finland and Germany, men are significantly more likely than women to be reluctant radicals. Our dataset for the UK indicates that men are also more likely to be reluctant BNP and UKIP supporters. It may be that men are more likely to be reluctant radicals for RPPs with a smaller base of supporters, such as the BNP in Britain and RPPs in Germany.32
However, in other countries there is no evidence for gender having a relationship with reluctant radicalism, when other socio-demographic variables are controlled for. Cross-tabulations for Norway, the Netherlands and Italy (based on the fifth round of the ESS and ITANES 2008) underline the small or non-existent gender gap for the reluctant radicals in these countries.
Gender by country
Source: The Netherlands and Norway: ESS round 5; Italy: ITANES 2008
With respect to potential radicals there is even less evidence of a gender gap, except in France where it is reversed – here, women are more likely than men to be potential radicals. Women are also more likely to be potential radicals in Italy and the UK (bearing in mind that different anti-immigration variables are used). Others have also shown that women are just as likely to hold anti-immigration or xenophobic attitudes as men, in spite of the fact that they are less likely to vote for anti-immigration parties.33 There appears to be a barrier between being a potential radical and a reluctant radical that blocks many women from voting, despite their attitudes.
If our reluctant radicals are not overwhelmingly men, is there a relationship with age?
Some previous research has pointed to younger people being more likely to vote for the populist right.34 Our results show that there are significant variations for the reluctant radicals across countries.
As a further illustration of the lack of a consistent pattern, in Germany, younger people tend to be more likely than older people to be reluctant radicals. But in Denmark, the opposite is the case. In Britain, using a separate dataset, we find that, similarly, older people are more likely than the young to be reluctant UKIP supporters. Meanwhile, in Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, there is no evidence that age is related to reluctant radicalism at all, at least when other socio-demographic factors are controlled for.
Analysing contingency tables reveals further inconsistencies across countries. In Hungary, reluctant radicals tend to be younger than average. In the Netherlands, there is evidence to suggest that committed radicals are younger than average, but this is not the case with respect to reluctant radicals. In Italy, reluctant radicals are more likely to be aged between 35 and 49 than the electorate as a whole. Our results are mixed, but one thing is clear: reluctant radicalism is not just a young man’s game.
Age distribution in Hungary
Source: ESS round 5
Age distribution in the Netherlands
Source: ESS round 5
Age distribution in Denmark
Source: ESS round 5
On the other hand, older people are more likely than other age groups to be potential radicals in Germany, Denmark, Finland, France and Norway, as well as in Britain and Italy with respect to our alternative datasets.35 As with gender, there is a remarkable disparity between attitudes and action.
Since older people consistently tend to be potential radicals – holding anti-immigration views but not taking action by turning to an RPP – we would expect that they would also be consistently more likely to be reluctant radicals. Yet this is not the case. Again, we find that, despite having anti-immigration attitudes, there is a barrier that prevents older potential radicals from crossing over and becoming reluctant radicals. They reject populist politics in spite of their views, not because of them.
Understanding the nature of this barrier is crucial to determining what allows those with anti-immigration attitudes into populist politics. That older people with anti-immigration attitudes appear to be less likely to make this leap suggests that it is their attachment to mainstream political parties that holds them back.