Who are the losers of the economic crisis? Explaining the vote for rightwing populist parties in Europe after the Great Recession

Abstract

Right-wing populist parties (RWPP) have obtained outstanding electoral results during the Great Recession in Europe. While some authors have adopted a macro level approach to explain this success highlighting the relevance of the context of crisis, others have focused on micro explanations to analyse how the “losers of globalization” (the elderly, less educated and lower class) comprise the main electoral base of these parties. However, RWPP have performed much better in countries less affected by the crisis and, in certain contexts, the so-called “losers” of globalization have not been their main electoral base. Using individual data for 12 Western European countries provided by the European Election Studies (2014) database, in this paper we demonstrate that the combination of these two sets of explanations (at the macro and micro levels) is necessary not only for empirical reasons, but also for conceptual ones to understand the phenomenon. While the general profile of this family of voters tend to be older, less educated and belonging to the lower class, in countries most affected by the crisis RWPP voters tend to be younger and better educated.