Downward Class Mobility and Far-Right Party Support in Western Europe

This article contributes to debates about the importance of class in far-right voting behavior by focusing on intergenerational class mobility. Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we employ Diagonal Reference Models (DRMs) to examine whether and how actual downward class mobility is linked to far-right party voting. First, drawing on a framework that focuses on discontent, loss, and blame, we explore four types of mechanisms that may mediate this relationship: life satisfaction (discontent), income insecurity (loss), distrust of elites (internal blame attribution) and anti-immigration attitudes (external blame attribution). Our results show that individuals from salariat origins and working-class destination are more likely to vote for the far-right. However, the relationship between downward class mobility is only mediated by life satisfaction and income insecurity, suggesting that the class route to far-right voting is largely linked to existential and material issues. Second, we explore whether these individual-level variables, as well as overall national-level mobility, moderate the effect of downward mobility. We find that while mobility effects do not vary depending on these individual traits, overall national-level mobility does moderate the effect of downward mobility, suggesting that context matters for individual-level associations between class mobility and far-right voting. Third, we assess the extent to which downward class mobility is important for far-right party success by examining the share of downwardly mobile individuals within the far-right electorate. We find that while downwardly mobile individuals are likely far-right supporters, they constitute a small percentage of the far-right electorate. Overall, our findings show that downward class mobility significantly affects far-right voting but only under specific conditions.