Left parties’ strategies and working-class vote in contemporary Western Europe (2002–2020)

What should the left do strategically to retain workers' vote? This paper provides extensive empirical evidence on the relationship between left parties' different programmatic strategies and workers' electoral support in 19 Western European countries over the past 2 decades (2002–2020), focussing on economic and cultural positions, salience, and party-system polarisation. Multilevel analyses of ESS data show that, most of all, working-class respondents' probability of voting for a left party has been significantly higher in contemporary Western Europe when such parties put greater emphasis on cultural issues, regardless of position. The left's engagement with increasingly important cultural matters is rewarded by working-class voters, rather than seen as compromising on its class roots. Whilst this finding applies across left parties, more disaggregated analyses show that support for social democratic parties is considerably more sensitive to different supply-side strategies than support for radical left parties: i.e., both on cultural and economic issues. • Workers' support for the left declined to unprecedented levels in Western Europe. • Changed electoral association driven by workers' abandonment of social democracy. • Left parties retain workers' vote when putting greater emphasis on cultural issues. • Social democratic parties much more sensitive to different programmatic strategies. • Economically leftist positions, emphasis on economy beneficial for social democracy.