Divergence or nationalization? Voting across constituencies in four European countries

While the nationalization of elections is often viewed as a key characteristic of modern European democracies, the growing body of evidence on urban-rural electoral divergence suggests a reversal of nationalization, due to regional disparities in electoral outcomes. In this paper we study this issue by analyzing constituency-level election results from Denmark, England, France, and Germany over six decades. Using a divergence index, we uncover a trend toward increasing electoral divergence in election outcomes between constituencies in three of the four countries (not in Denmark), particularly since the 2000s. While we find evidence that non-mainstream parties and party system fragmentation contribute to this increase, even the results of mainstream parties have diverged more in recent elections. We also show that rural-urban electoral polarization is an important predictor of divergence which, alongside party system fragmentation and non-mainstream party strength, accounts for much of the temporal trend—suggesting that the growing structuring of party competition along the density gradient is a key driver of de-nationalization. Our findings challenge former analyses suggesting the inevitability of nationalization and underscore the importance of geographical divides in shaping European political landscapes.