“What’s Going On?” Comparing and Contrasting Issue Affinities and Dissimilarities in the European Electorates

Abstract The multidimensionality of competition between political parties has raised questions about patterns of affinity and dissimilarity between them. Less explored, however, is the extent to which voters of different electoral parties share or differ in their evaluations of crucial political dimensions. We attempt to solve this puzzle by comparing voters from 4 different party families: mainstream left and mainstream right, radical left, and radical right. Using comparative survey data from 5 Western European countries, we assess voters’ positions on specific cultural and economic issues that are salient in the real world, and show the extent to which the voters of different party families are compatible. We find that voters are aligned to the left and right on non-economic issues, while the classical left-right alignment on economic issues is weaker. These unusual patterns confirm the importance of a new cultural divide and also show that traditional left-right allegiances on these issues are more important than economic issues in structuring party competition. These findings open up important new avenues of research for the study of coalition formation and agenda-setting.