Curious about my current research projects? Below, I’ve listed some of my ongoing research papers. If you’d like to access the latest versions of any of these papers or have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
How Education, Generation and Gender Structure Voting for Green and Radical Right Parties: An Interactive Approach
Armin Schäfer & Nils D. Steiner
Abstract: This article refines our understanding of the socio-structural basis of voting for green and radical right parties by studying how formal education, generations, and gender interact. Given the emergent nature of the GAL-TAN cleavage, it, first, theorizes that educational gaps in voting for green and radical right parties have widened across cohorts. Second, it argues that this generational widening of the education divide may be gender specific. In line with the argument, the results from age-period-cohort (APC) analyses on data from the European Social Survey (ESS), rounds 1 to 10, for ten Western European countries show a successive widening of educational gaps across generations. This holds for both men and women regarding voting for the radical right. Concerning green voting, it applies especially to women, with highly educated millennial women being most attracted to green parties. These patterns imply that the GAL-TAN cleavage crystallizes with generational replacement.
False Consensus Beliefs and Populist Attitudes
Nils D. Steiner, Claudia Landwehr & Philipp Harms
Abstract: A well-established finding from social psychology is that people tend to hold “false consensus beliefs”, that is, they regularly overestimate how many others agree with their own opinions. The consequences of such beliefs for how citizens assess democratic legitimacy have been left largely unexplored, however. We reason that false consensus beliefs may give citizens the erroneous impression that their political preferences are shared by most fellow citizens while political elites fail to follow this apparent will of the majority. False consensus beliefs might therefore play an important role in the development of populist attitudes to politics. Using original survey data from Germany, we document a robust observational relationship between false consensus beliefs and populist attitudes. This association applies to all subdimensions of populist attitudes, holds for individuals with different self-placements on the left-right scale, and extends to related measures of political support (external efficacy and political trust). Our findings suggest a novel cause of populist attitudes, rooted in humans’ tendency to project their own views onto others—a tendency that could be exacerbated by today’s high-choice media environments. [LINK]
The 2024 European Parliament Election: Another Second-Order National Election?
Nils D. Steiner
Abstract: One of the most influential theories of voting in European Parliament (EP) elections sees them as being perceived as second-order national elections that would stand in the shadow of national elections. Consequently, many voters would use EP elections to voice dissatisfaction with the national government and to signal their sincere preferences by supporting smaller and fringe parties. This letter assesses whether the party-level results in the 2024 European Parliament elections are (still) in line with the second-order patterns established by previous research. In line with those, larger parties and parties in national government—especially prime-ministerial parties later in the electoral cycle—have on average lost votes in 2024 compared to the previous national election. When accounting for these regularities, there is little, if any, evidence of party families systematically gaining or losing.
Who Votes for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW)? A Policy-Space Perspective
Nils D. Steiner & Sven Hillen
Abstract: This contribution studies voting intentions for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) from a policy-space perspective. What makes the new German party special is its unusual bundling of economically left-wing with culturally right-wing positions. We turn to survey data from March 2024 (GLES Tracking T57) to assess how this bundling is reflected in the positions of their supporters. Distinguishing between an economic policy dimension, a transnational dimension and a traditional morality dimension, we find that the probability of intending to vote for the BSW increases with more left-wing economic positions and with more nationalist positions. Conservative positions on traditional morality are not meaningfully associated with the overall probability of a BSW vote but make it more likely to support BSW rather than the Greens and less likely to support BSW relative to the AfD. We conclude that the policy-space perspective holds potential to understand the party’s early success, but that its voters are better characterized as ‘left-nationalists’ than ‘left-conservatives’. [LINK]
Income Inequality and Populist Attitudes: Evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems V
Nils D. Steiner
Abstract: Economic inequality figures prominently among the factors that have been discussed as drivers of the success of populist parties. One plausible underlying mechanism is that economic inequality increases populist sentiment among voters which in turn leads to higher support for populist parties. Yet, we lack evidence on whether populist attitudes are more widespread where economic inequality is higher. In this study, I use data on 40 elections from the 5th Module of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES)—the first large cross-national survey dataset containing a measure of populist attitudes—to contribute such evidence. The analysis uncovers a substantively strong and robust positive cross-country correlation between income inequality and populist attitudes. Yet contrary to expectations, economic inequality does not make a larger difference for populist attitudes among those with lower socio-economic status. These findings add to evidence pointing to a connection between inequality and populism—but suggest that higher inequality contexts provide conditions conducive to populist sentiment among broad segments of the population.