Negative partisanship in Western Europe

We still know little about levels of negative partisanship in Western Europe, what it consists of, how it relates to important key attitudinal variables, and its relation to the radical-right. This paper addresses these open questions, finding that negative partisanship reaches up to 70 %, which is often more prevalent than positive partisanship, and that it is mainly composed of the rejection of a party's worldviews. Positive and negative partisanship strongly predict one another, while political involvement and the salience of one's political identity are significant predictors of both. Also, being on the left of the ideological spectrum is associated with having a negative partisanship. Finally, observing the relationship between the radical-right and negative partisanship, three elements emerge: disliking a PRRP is associated with higher levels of negative partisanship, which is higher on the left side of the ideological left-right continuum, but the relation is curvilinear, and this distribution varies largely across countries.