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Fundamental transformations of underlying cleavage structures in advanced democracies should become evident in new collective identities. This article uses quantitative text analysis to investigate how voters describe their ingroups and outgroups in open-ended survey responses. I look at Switzerland, a paradigmatic case of electoral realignment along a “second,” universalism–particularism dimension of politics opposing the far right and the new left. Keyness statistics and a semi-supervised document scaling method (latent semantic scaling) serve to identify terms associated with the poles of this divide in voters’ responses, and hence to measure universalist/particularist identities. Based on voters’ own words, the results support the idea of collective identities consolidating an emerging cleavage: Voters’ identity descriptions relate to far right versus new left support, along with known sociostructural and attitudinal correlates of the universalism–particularism divide, and they reveal how groups opposed on this dimension antagonistically demarcate themselves from each other.

Opposition between the far right and the new left has transformed West European politics, mainly through increasing sociocultural conflicts. We ask what the new cleavage articulated by these parties implies for the politicization of inequalities in advanced knowledge societies. We contrast two diverging expectations in existing literature: A first, more rational-choice-based perspective expects a trade-off, with new left voters "privileged" by economic transformations emphasizing sociocultural inequalities over socioeconomic ones–and vice versa for "disadvantaged" far right voters. A second, more sociological perspective, predicts attitudes on inequalities to be aligned along a single dimension from new left "universalists" being inequality-averse to right-wing "particularists" being more inequality-tolerant. Our evidence based on original survey data from Germany supports the second perspective. Studying the structural (educational, class, etc.) foundations of inequality aversion suggests that even the transformed (new) left electorate is more sensitive to all dimensions of inequality than voters on the (far) right.

Education is widely recognized as structuring emerging political divides between the new left and the far right (Stubager 2009; Häusermann and Kriesi 2015; Abou-Chadi and Hix 2021; Marks et al. 2022). However, there is ongoing uncertainty about the mechanism through which the education cleavage operates, particularly in the absence of mobilizing organizations. We fielded a survey in Germany in October 2022 (to be followed by Switzerland and the UK) to explore the hypothesis that patterns of social segregation by education create social networks which foster common identities, political attitudes, and voting behavior (consolidating key aspects of an emerging cleavage). We offer descriptive evidence that individuals tend to be embedded in educationally-distinct social networks. In turn, our preliminary findings show that network composition in terms of both level and field are associated with social identities, political attitudes, and vote choice, above and beyond individual educational characteristics.

It is widely accepted in political science – and remarkably established in public discourse – that status anxieties fuel a far right backlash against progressive politics. This narrative suggests that right-wing conservatives perceive the status of women, racial, or sexual minorities as threatening. Using open-ended survey questions fielded in Germany, we show that women and minorities do figure in people’s perceptions of status hierarchies, but in very specific ways: First, overall, people still perceive status as largely socioeconomically determined. Second, sociocultural groups figure in perceptions of who is gaining/losing status, less so in perceptions of the top/bottom of society. Third, more than authoritarian voters, it is social progressives who perceive women and minorities as “winners”. While on race/ethnicity, we find evidence for a backlash, on gender and sexuality we find more evidence for a progressive momentum. This matters for progressive politics today and for how we empirically study status concerns.

Recent studies take increasingly refined views of how socioeconomic conditions influence political behaviour. We add to this literature by exploring how voters' prospective evaluations of long-term economic and social opportunities relate to electoral contestation versus the stabilization of the political-economic system underpinning the knowledge society. Using survey data from eight West European countries, we show that positive prospects are associated with higher support for mainstream parties (incumbents and opposition) and lower support for radical parties on all levels of material well-being. Our results support the idea that ‘aspirational voters’ with positive evaluations of opportunities (for themselves or their children) represent an important stabilizing force in advanced democratic capitalism. However, we also highlight the importance of radical party support among ‘apprehensive voters’, who are economically secure but perceive a lack of long-term opportunities. To assess the implications of these findings, we discuss the relative importance of these groups across different countries.

Western Europe is experiencing growing levels of political polarization between parties of the New Left and the Far Right. In many countries, the socio-structural foundations of this divide (class, education, residence) are by now so clear that many interpret this divide as a fully mobilized new electoral cleavage. At the same time, observers have highlighted a growing fragmentation of party systems and the proliferation of new competitors. We suggest to make sense of these contradic- tory developments by focusing on the shared group identities that constitute the “glue” of cleavage formation translating grievances into political antagonisms. Our contribution relies on data from an original online survey fielded in France, Germany, the UK and Switzerland. Respondents an- swered questions on their sense of belonging to a series of social groups, electoral preferences and socio-demographics. On this basis, we are able to show – observationally – that socio-structural categories relate to both socio-economically (e.g. class) and socio-culturally (e.g. cosmopolitanism, lifestyle) connoted group identities, which divide New Left and Far Right voters in surprisingly similar ways across contexts. We then study the extent of social closure and political mobilization at the extremes of the new divide through the analysis of social networks, perceived group align- ments, and perceived representation. Our findings suggest that the new conflict is firmly rooted in socio-economic categories and at the societal level. Its political mobilization happens mostly via culturally connoted identities. What is more, social realignments and closure are highly similar across the four countries. This underscores that party competition remains rooted in structural an- tagonisms even as support for individual parties becomes more volatile. To detect this underlying similarity and stability, it is necessary to focus on voter alignments to ideological party blocs, rather than individual parties

Fast 50 Prozent der Wähler*innen, die bei den nationalen Wahlen 2015 der SP Schweiz ihre Stimme gegeben hatten, entschieden sich bei den nationalen Wahlen von 2019 anders. Wer der Urne 2019 nicht gleich gänzlich fernblieb, wanderte vornehmlich von der SP zu den Grünen ab, während die medial oft beschworenen Wanderungen von der SP zur SVP praktisch inexistent waren und tatsächlich seit Beginn unserer Datenreihe Mitte der 1990er-Jahre nicht zu beobachten sind. Wieso? Erklärt die Zusammensetzung der Wählerschaften dieser Parteien diese Muster? Die Einstellungen der Wähler*innen? Und worin unterscheiden sich SP und GPS aus Sicht der Wähler*innen überhaupt? Könnten Unterschiede in der Wahrnehmung der Kompetenz von SP und GPS seitens der Wähler*innen erklären, wieso Wähler*innen (immer häufiger) von der SP zur GPS oder (immer seltener) von der GPS zur SP wechseln?

40 bis 45% aller Wähler*innen in der Schweiz können sich vorstellen, die SP zu wählen, aber nur etwa 40% von diesen potenziellen Wähler* innen tun es tatsächlich. Die SP verfügt demnach über ein beträchtliches unausgeschöpftes Wählerpotenzial. Überlappungen in den Wählerpotenzialen finden sich im links-grünen Parteienspektrum, aber kaum mit rechten Parteien: Die potenziell zusätzlich gewinnbaren SP-Wähler*innen finden sich vor allem in den Wählerschaften der Grünen und Grünliberalen und bei den jungen Nichtwählenden. Wer sind diese potenziell gewinnbaren Wähler*innen? Sie sind in der Tendenz jung, mehrheitlich weiblich und gut gebildet. Thematisch halten sie umweltpolitische, gesellschaftspolitische, internationale und institutionelle Herausforderungen für die wichtigsten Probleme, welche die Schweiz lösen muss. Im Einklang mit dieser Problemwahrnehmung finden im sozialdemokratischen Wählerpotenzial progressive gesellschaftspolitische Positionen die grösste positive Resonanz, stärker noch als sozialpolitisch expansive Positionen. Das Spiegelbild der potenziellen Gewinne bilden hohe potenzielle Verluste zu den beiden grünen Parteien: Gut 70 Prozent der SP-Wählenden können sich auch vorstellen, die grüne Partei zu wählen, fast 40 Prozent können sich auch vorstellen, die grünliberale Partei zu wählen.

How does political polarization between the new left and the far right figure in how voters think about a changing society and their place in it? This paper uses quantitative text analysis to investigate how Swiss voters describe their in-groups and out-groups in open-ended survey responses. I focus on identities underpinning a ‘second’, universalism-particularism dimension of politics (where new left and far right parties occupy the poles). A semi-supervised document scaling method–latent semantic scaling–serves to 1) identify terms associated with the poles of this divide in voters’ identity descriptions and 2) measure individuals’ universalist versus particularist identities. These identities underpin new left versus far right party support, and they appear socio-structurally rooted in educational and urban-rural divides. Moreover, the specific content of voters’ identity descriptions supports the idea that the universalism-particularism divide is emerging as a fully-fledged ‘cleavage’ durably linking socio-structural and political divides through antagonistic collective identities.

Western Europe is experiencing growing levels of political polarization between parties of the New Left and the Far Right. In many countries, the socio-structural foundations of this divide (class, education, residence) are by now so clear that many interpret this divide as a fully mobilized new electoral cleavage. However, cleavage formation also requires processes of social closure and collective identity-formation: shared group identities are the “glue” of cleavage formation, as they translate grievances into political antagonisms. This translation is far from straightforward, as it depends on both bottom-up and top-down driven processes of group boundary-drawing, social closure and political mobilization. In this paper, we ask how far the processes of electoral cleavage formation have progressed, studying both countries of early (Switzerland, France) and more recent partisan realignment (Germany, UK). Our contribution relies on data from an original online survey fielded in these four countries. Respondents answered questions on their sense of belonging to a series of social groups, electoral preferences and socio-demographics. On this basis, we are able to show – observationally – that socio-structural categories relate to both socio-economically (e.g. class) and socio-culturally (e.g. cosmopolitanism, lifestyle) connoted group identities, which divide New Left and Far Right voters. We then study the extent of social closure and political mobilization at the extremes of the new divide through the analysis of social networks, perceived group alignments, perceived representation, and preference variance. Our findings so far suggest that the new conflict is firmly rooted in socio-economic categories and at the societal level. Its political mobilization happens mostly via culturally connoted identities. While social realignments and closure are highly similar across the four countries, cleavage formation in terms of partisan political mobilization is further advanc

The last decades have seen the emergence of a divide pitting the new left against the far right in advanced democracies. We study how this universalism-particularism divide is crystallizing into a full-blown cleavage, complete with structural, political and identity elements. So far, little research exists on the identities that voters themselves perceive as relevant for drawing in- and out-group boundaries along this divide. Based on an original survey from Switzerland, a paradigmatic case of electoral realignment, we show that voters’ “objective” socio-demographic characteristics relate to distinctive, primarily culturally connoted identities. We then inquire into the degree to which these group identities have been politicized, that is, whether they divide new left and far right voters. Our results strongly suggest that the universalism-particularism “cleavage” not only bundles issues, but shapes how people think about who they are and where they stand in a group conflict that meshes economics and culture.

West European party systems have become characterised by increasing fragmentation and the rise of new challenger parties. Delia Zollinger writes that while these developments may suggest a future of political volatility, this need not be the case. Drawing on a new study, she illustrates that we may instead be witnessing the rise of a new political divide that has the potential to structure politics in the years to come.