Europe, Election Data Study: Adopting Rightwing Policies 'Does Not Help Centre-Left Win Votes'
The Guardian, Jan. 10, 2024. Adopting rightwing policies ‘does not help centre-left win votes.’ Study of European electoral data suggests social democratic parties alienate supporters by moving towards the political centre
Is Europe’s left really in crisis? It’s complex but there is hope.
Adopting rightwing policies on issues such as immigration and the economy does not help centre-left parties win votes, according to new analysis of European electoral and polling data. Faced with a 20-year decline in their vote share, accompanied by rising support for the right, far right and sometimes the far left, social democratic parties across Europe have increasingly sought salvation by moving towards the political centre.
However, the analysis, published on Wednesday, shows that centre-left parties promising, for example, to be tough on immigration or public spending are unlikely to attract potential voters on the right, and risk alienating existing progressive supporters. “Voters tend to prefer the original to the copy,” said Tarik Abou-Chadi, an associate professor of European politics at the University of Oxford and the co-founder of the Progressive Politics Research Network (PPRNet), which launched on Wednesday.
Abou-Chadi said the team of political scientists, from universities including Barcelona, Lausanne, Vienna, Zurich and Berlin, was not “aiming to advise or act as political consultants” but to present “careful, empirical, data-based” research. “We’re looking to provide a more solid, accurate foundation for an open political debate about progressive politics, who votes for progressive parties and why, and the strategies available to them,” he said. “That involves a bit of myth-busting.”
One of the most significant misperceptions the team’s work had revealed, he said, concerned the nature of support for centre-left parties in Europe. “Social structures have been utterly transformed since the heyday of social democracy,” Abou-Chadi said. “The average social democratic voter today is very, very different from 50, even 20 years ago – and unlikely to be an industrial worker. The data also shows much of this new constituency is actually both culturally progressive and economically leftwing.” Analysis showed little real voter competition between the centre left and the radical right, as some social democratic politicians argue...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/10/adopting-rightwing-policies-does-not-help-centre-left-win-votes
