Good Bye Blue Collar

Abstract

Social democratic parties (SDPs) in Western Europe are undergoing turbulent times. From being among the largest and most influential political parties after WWII, in recent times they have been struggling with a constant drop in their rates of electoral support. In this thesis I have therefore investigated which groups in society still support SDPs and what the motivations behind this choice are. The analysis shows that someone who is lower-educated, belongs to the working class, has a reasonably protected job and has a positive attitude towards cultural liberalism, European integration as well as immigration, will be the most likely to vote for SDPs. For SDPs, this implies that the years to come will be probably very difficult as well. The size of the working class has strongly declined over the last years, the labour market is becoming increasingly flexible, the European project has been under a vast amount of critique and the refugee crisis has strongly polarised Western European societies.