Economic Inequality and Vote Choice in Populist Times: Swedes in Context

• In Event: Sociocultural Conflict in a Globalized Era

Abstract

As political debates in Europe focus more and more on issues such as immigration, EU authority, and climate change, how does economic inequality figure into citizens’ political behavior? In relative terms, economic issues have become less politically dominant as compared to these other themes across European countries. Yet for decades matters of inequality structured partisan competition and electoral choice, and more recently anti-elite, populist rhetoric has given these issues a new spin. We think that there are important complementarities and tensions among immigration, European integration, climate change and economic inequality that have not been effectively illuminated in existing work. In this paper we take a fresh look at economic inequality in the context of recent political turmoil and post-materialist shifts, focusing on the ways in which matters of wealth disparity in a society shape voter behavior.

To put our ideas about inequality to a tough test, we examine the contours and dynamics of public opinion in a highly equal country on a global scale: Sweden. Stepping back to think generally about economic inequality, we examine it in objective and subjective terms, nesting survey respondents in their dynamic, local contexts. We also leverage a survey experiment that manipulates the attention brought to the issue of inequality at different levels of societal aggregation. This study provides important descriptive information on Swedes’ views about inequality relative to other issues, and it also sheds light on the ways concerns about inequality shape vote choice. Notably, our preliminary results show that economic inequality significantly erodes support for the Green Party. In contrast, it heightens support for the radical right Sweden Democrats, but these effects are conditioned on a range of contextual and attitudinal factors. In broad terms our paper provides important insights into the ways in which voters think about inequality and the implications of these concerns for elections in a fluid electoral environment.

Authors

• Jeffrey Nonnemacher, University of Pittsburgh

• Jennifer Fitzgerald, University of Colorado at Boulder