Abstract:
Since their (re-)introduction to Western European party systems in the 1990s, populist radical right
parties have attracted support from working-class voters, who, according to classic cleavage theory are
expected to vote for left-wing parties. This thesis tests three mechanisms that could explain this turn to
the right: economic grievances, cultural protectionism, and protest voting. Furthermore, it tests whether
some of these mechanisms are more important than the others, and whether their strength depends on
issue salience. By performing a multi-level logistic regression on data gathered in twelve Western-
European countries, this thesis concludes that all tested mechanisms play an important role in explaining
why working-class citizens vote for populist right-wing parties, and that these mechanisms do not only
apply to the working-class, but to other classes in society as well. It also finds that the mechanisms
regarding cultural protectionism exhibits the largest effect of the three tested mechanisms, and that the
explanatory power of these mechanisms is heavily influenced by issue salience because of major events,
even to the point where some mechanisms only display an significant effect when made salient by a
major event.
