The Electoral Coalition of the Radical Right in Western Europe

While most research on the radical right attempts to identify the one central voting motive among its supporters, few studies have sought to differentiate between different types of voters. Given this research gap, we assume that there are multiple paths to the radical right and that different groups have different motives for their support for this party family. Based on different waves of the ESS, we conduct a cluster analysis in order to classify the ideological heterogeneity within the electorates of 15 Western European radical right parties across three conflict dimensions (redistribution, cultural liberalism, migration). We distinguish between four types of voters, analyse their social characteristics and try to identify different voting motives, ranging from defending economic status hierarchies to processing economic insecurities or protesting the loss of cultural hegemony. On the basis of these findings, we discuss what holds the electoral coalition of the radical right together and what can potentially divide it.