Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe

Abstract

The rise of populist radical right parties fuels a discussion about the roots of their success. Existing research has demonstrated the relevance of gender, education and income for explaining the far-right vote. The present study contributes to the aforementioned debate by focusing on the role of religiosity. The data collected in the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016) allow examining in more detail the political relevance of attendance at religious services and other measures of religious devotion. This study focuses in particular on 15 countries, 11 from Western Europe and 4 from East-Central Europe. In none of the Western European countries is there evidence of a positive relationship between religiosity and vote for a populist radical right party. In fact, in many countries of this region more religious voters are substantively less inclined to support far-right movements. The situation is different in parts of East-Central Europe. In Poland, and to a weaker extent also in Hungary, the probability of a vote for right-wing populists increases with religiosity.

Keywords

Christian democracy East-Central Europe populist radical right parties religion religiosity Western Europe

Introduction

The rise of populism and the surge of populist radical right (PRR) parties more specifically have led to a renewed focus on the determinants of their electoral success throughout Europe (Halikiopoulou, 2018; Rooduijn, 2018). Scholars have studied the role of contextual factors, such as economic conditions or immigration (Arzheimer, 2009; Hays et al., 2019), as well as PRR parties’ positions (Jankowski et al., 2017; Lewandowsky et al., 2016). Much attention has been given to examining the individual-level determinants of voting for radical right (Kestilä-Kekkonen and Söderlund, 2014; Quinlan and Tinney, 2019; Schmitt-Beck, 2017; Schumacher and Rooduijn, 2013). The majority of these individual-level studies analyze single countries, but there is growing interest in explaining the determinants of a vote for PRR parties in comparative perspective (Harteveld et al., 2015; Rooduijn, 2018; van Elsas, 2017; van Hauwaert and van Kessel, 2018). The comparative research usually explores the factors that the electorates of PRR parties have in common, disregarding the possibility that the effects of some individual-level variables might be context-dependent. The present analysis intends to close this gap. It does so by focusing on one aspect which, with few exceptions (Ádám and Bozóki, 2016a; Allen, 2017; Arzheimer and Carter, 2009; Montgomery and Winter, 2015), has not received much attention in work on the success of right-wing populists: religiosity.

Societal changes might explain the lack of interest in the relationship between religion and voting for PRR parties. Since at least the 1960s, European countries have experienced a rapid trend of secularization (Kenis and Pasture, 2010). Even societies that were until recently characterized by very high levels of religiosity are now being affected by this trend. Data from Poland—the most religious society of East-Central Europe—suggest that church attendance is in decline there as well (Flieger and Wilgocki, 2018). Even if scholars’ diminished interest in the role of religion on voters’ choices is understandable, its effect on the vote in Europe warrants more attention. We see three main reasons for reconsidering the role of religion on the vote, for PRR parties in particular. First, many European PRR parties invoke Christian traditions in their manifestos, often in opposition to Islam. Admittedly, some of them identify with secularism and distance themselves from all religions (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009). However, the examples of PRR parties explicitly referring to Christianity or the Christian culture in their programmatic documents are ample. Christianity is mentioned on five occasions in the 2014 manifesto of the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, and the party platform contains a whole section on the party’s relations with the Catholic Church, denouncing attacks on Catholic Church and warning that “the only alternative for Catholic moral teaching in Poland is nihilism” (PiS, 2014: 11). Similarly, under Salvini’s leadership, the Italian Lega has “embraced Christianity” and promotes Catholicism “as the first line of resistance against both immigration and a secular, European identity” (Molle, 2019: 154). The manifesto of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) contains four references to Christianity. Differently than PiS and Lega, the AfD does not specifically distinguish any denomination. Instead, its manifesto juxtaposes multiculturalism with the concept of a dominant German culture (Leitkultur) which combines three traditions, Christianity, the “scientific-humanist tradition” and the Roman law (AfD, 2016: 92). The AfD contrasts its allegiance to these values with a pledge to counter the perceived expansion of Islam (AfD, 2016: 96). Even the manifesto of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), which draws on anti-clerical traditions (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009: 989), contains a general reference to Christianity as part of Austrian cultural heritage (FPÖ, 2011).¹

Second, while the strong presence of Christian Democracy in Europe effectively integrated religious voters in the political system (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009), the decline of these parties (Aarts and Thomassen, 2008; Duncan, 2015), warrants a renewed attention to the question how the most religious vote.

Third, following the 2004 enlargement, a group of new member states joined the European Union (EU) including both the least and the most religious country among developed societies (i.e., Czechia and Poland). These countries’ party systems, furthermore, emerged in substantively different conditions than those found in Western Europe. Their inclusion introduces much variation both in religiosity and in terms of party competition, which has been associated with more attention for religion in debates in the European Parliament (Góra and Zielińska, 2014). This may affect the connection between religion and support for the PRR parties.

In short, societal and political changes offer reasons for revisiting the link between religion and support for PRR parties. We therefore conduct a comprehensive analysis of this link, with recent data that cover both countries in Western and in East-Central Europe. In what follows, we theorize about the role of religion in a European context and offer compelling arguments for expecting either the traditionally observed negative relationship between religion and voting for PRR parties in Europe, or for a newly emerging positive correlation. Our core argument, however is that the direction of this relationship will be context-dependent. We hypothesize that differences can be explained by the presence (or absence) of a strong Christian-Democratic party. These expectations are put to a test by relying on the data of the 2016 European Social Survey (ESS). We find that church attendance is a relevant factor for explaining the vote for PRR parties. The direction of the relationship between church attendance and the vote, however, diverges between Western and East-Central Europe. In addition, the differences between the two groups of countries seem conditional on the strength of Christian Democracy.

Religion and party choice

Scholars of voting behavior have long been interested in understanding the effect of religion on the vote. In Europe, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) have given a central place to the role of religion in politics, treating it as one of the main “cleavages” shaping party competition. As observed by van der Brug et al. (2000: 87) social “class and religious denomination were until the late 1960s good predictors of party choice.” And even though there are still settings where religious denomination shapes voters’ electoral choices, starting from the 1970s, the impact of religion on the vote appears to have taken a new form. In the United States, the differences in electoral behavior between adherents of diverse religious traditions have become more blurred, while their level of religiosity has gained political relevance. In the words of Putnam and Campbell (2010: 35) “religious devotion has largely replaced religious denomination as a salient political dividing line.” A similar trend can be observed in Europe, as denominational cleavages are gradually being replaced by a religious-secular cleavage (Elff and Roßteutscher, 2017: 209). Such developments are paired with changes in party positions. In the US, for example, Republicans have started to ally themselves with the religious sections of society, while more secular voters have turned toward the Democrats. In the meantime, the traditional attachments of certain religious groups to some parties (e.g. Catholics and the Democratic Party) have weakened and been replaced by the emergence of a “coalition of religious” or “most religious” (Putnam and Campbell, 2010: 376).

While the Christian Right has long been established in the United States and has been analyzed extensively, less is known about the relationship between right-wing or far-right parties and individual religiosity in Europe (however, see Arzheimer and Carter, 2009; Montgomery and Winter, 2015 for exceptions). This lack of attention for the link between religiosity and support for PRR parties is not entirely surprising. Christian churches suffer massive losses of members and levels of religiosity have plummeted for several decades now (Kenis and Pasture, 2010). As a result, the relevance of analyzing religion for understanding voting behavior in European democracies seemingly decreases. The limited attention for the link between religion and right-wing voting might also result from the presence of mainstream and pro-systemic Christian-Democratic parties. These parties have traditionally gained support of religious voters (Kalyvas and van Kersbergen, 2010) extending beyond the adherents of one particular confession (Elff and Roßteutscher, 2017: 203; Roßteutcher, 2012: 111).

There are, however, indications of change in party systems—that motivate us to take a new look at the connection between religion and the vote in European democracies. First, over time, many Christian-Democratic parties have adopted more moderate positions (van Kersbergen, 2008). These changes are apparent in their attitudes toward same-sex marriage or abortion, two issues on which the position of Christian-Democratic parties contrasts with those of the American Christian Right. The moderation of Christian-Democrats on conservative issues, and their “willingness to strike political bargains” is partly a response to value changes in European societies. If Christian-Democrats wanted to renew their electoral base in the face of diminishing portions of the electorate still abiding to traditional religious values, they had to expand. This moderation is thought of as a key element that contributed to the remarkable and continued success of many of these parties in a context of secularization (Kalyvas and van Kersbergen, 2010). However, in broadening their appeal, Christian-Democratic parties also have contributed to weakening their appeal to the religious voters. That is, when they no longer emphasize traditional values, the effect of religion on the likelihood to voting for a Christian-Democratic party weakens (Jansen et al., 2012), which may induce some religious voters to abstain (Goldberg, 2020: 73) or look for alternatives.

Second, in virtually all European countries, PRR parties have increased their electoral support (Halikiopoulou, 2018; Mudde, 2013). Their rhetoric is anti-immigrant, often opposing Muslim migration (Wodak, 2015). Furthermore, they claim to support and strengthen “traditional” families and family values. Some PRR parties even refer explicitly to Christianity and Christian traditions in their manifestos. PRR parties thus combine elements of hawkish nationalism with “faith-based” radical proposals. While in countries like Israel both types of radical right-wing parties may be clearly distinguished (Hirsch-Hoefler et al., 2010), the distinction between these groups is more blurred in Europe.

The “faith-based” discourse of PRR parties in particular, with a focus on traditional positions on moral values like abortion or gay marriage, likely appeals to the most religious parts of the electorate. Indeed, higher levels of religiosity are predictive of more traditional attitudes in terms of gender, or gay rights, as a series of supplementary analyses in Appendix B clarify. Based on their attitudes on such issues, hence, we could expect that the more religious are more likely to vote for a PRR party.

Hypothesis 1: The more religious is an individual, the higher her likelihood of voting for a populist radical right party.

Expectations differ when focusing on the “hawkish nationalist flank” of PRR parties. In terms of issues related to immigration and nationalism in particular, the clerical elite defends liberal positions that are at odds with the mixture of Christian rhetoric and anti-immigration sentiment offered by the populist radical right parties. The pope, for example, appealed on behalf of the refugees during the refugee crisis. European Protestant churches are usually even more progressive. The openness of the church to immigrants was particularly clear from the role of Christian parishes in welcoming and integrating refugees during the refugee crisis in Germany in 2015.

Beyond the pro-refugee appeals of Christian churches and leaders, there is quite some evidence of the faithful behaving in “progressive” ways when focusing on issues related to immigration. As can be seen from supplementary analyses reported in Appendix B, on average, levels of church attendance correlate negatively with anti-immigrant attitudes. This progressivism likely stems from a view of Christianity as a universal religion transcending the boundaries of race and nation. In summary, “the values, beliefs, and traditions associated with most contemporary versions of the Christian faith are those of tolerance, compassion and altruism, and these find little in common with the authoritarian, xenophobic and even racist ideologies and appeals of the parties of the radical right, and the practice of targeting some of the most vulnerable groups in society such as refugees and immigrants” (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009: 989). If the version of the “social gospel” (Elff and Roßteutscher, 2017; Putnam and Campbell, 2010) that Pope Francis and other religious leaders adopt reflects the attitudes of most religious voters, and drives their vote choice, we should expect then exact opposite of Hypothesis 1.

Hypothesis 2: The more religious is an individual, the lower her likelihood of voting for a populist radical right party.

While both of our hypotheses are plausible, we also think that whether religious voters will be more (Hypothesis 1) or less (Hypothesis 2) likely to support PRR parties will partly be context-dependent. We draw on Arzheimer and Carter (2009: 991) who observe that a mechanism explaining the relationship between religion and vote for PRR parties “will clearly depend on differences in national contexts and on features of each political system.” More specifically, we argue that the crucial differentiating factor between both situations is the strength of Christian Democracy in a country. In countries where strong Christian-Democratic parties exist, the negative relationship between religiosity and supporting PRR parties may be observed—regardless of the level of progressiveness of religious voters. In contrast, where no strong Christian-Democratic parties compete, the effect of religiosity on voting for populist radical right might be positive.

A first reason therefore is that when a strong Christian-Democratic party is present, those who identify with Christian values will still tend to vote for the party historically related with the interests of religious electorate. Despite important programmatic changes among Christian-Democratic parties, hence, their party identification may still draw religious voters away from supporting PRR parties. We hence expect the “vaccine”-effect of Christian democracy, that was described by Arzheimer and Carter (2009: 1005), to hold in European democracies more generally (see also Montgomery and Winter, 2015, for a similar argument regarding the role of viable mainstream parties).

Second, the fact that Christian-Democratic parties tend to position themselves on the right in terms of traditional values, but generally take more moderate positions on immigration and nationalism than populist radical right parties implies that their programmatic profile matches the preferences of the most religious more. In supplementary analyses (see Appendix B), we show that higher levels of church attendance are positively correlated with traditionalist values, but negatively correlated with anti-immigrant attitudes. When offered an option between PRR parties that take right-wing positions on both dimensions, and Christian-Democrats defending traditional values but taking a more moderate position on immigration (as shown in Appendix B), the latter are the “better match” for the more religious.

This mechanism, of the religious being less likely to vote for PRR parties when they can also choose a Christian-Democratic party, seems to be borne out in Germany. As shown by Dilling (2018: 97), who studied the electoral success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD): “[T]he odds of voting AfD decrease the more respondents identify as religious. Those stating that they are somewhat or very religious are only half and 25 percent as likely to vote AfD respectively than people saying that they are not at all religious. (…) This suggests that the AfD’s support base does not equal the CDU/CSU’s right wing. The latter has upheld conservative views but also been characterized by a high level of religiosity and an emphasis on the ‘C’ in CDU/CSU.”

This link between Christian Democracy and voting for right-wing parties has already received attention in the context of Western Europe (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009). Adding countries in East-Central Europe to the analyses, as we do here, makes for a more varied sample—allowing to verify what it is about parties with links to Christian religiosity that serves as a vaccine to right-wing populist voting. As observed by Putnam and Campbell (2010), politics is about making coalitions. And the shape of the “religious coalition” will crucially depend on how many parties compete for the votes of the faithful. These considerations lead to our third hypothesis that describes the expected cross-country difference:

Hypothesis 3: In countries with strong Christian-Democratic parties the relationship between church attendance and a vote for the populist radical right parties is negative, while it is positive in countries where Christian-Democratic parties are very weak or nonexistent.

Importantly, we think the conditioning role of a competitor to PRR parties is specific to Christian-Democrats, and does not necessarily hold for center-right parties in general. A secular center-right party may not appeal to religious voters as strongly as a Christian-Democratic party. Still, we verify empirically whether we find evidence of a similar conditioning effect when focusing on the strength of right-wing mainstream parties more generally instead of vote share of Christian-Democratic parties (see Appendix G).

Christian-democratic parties in East-Central Europe

Since the political systems we examine are quite diverse, it is important to clarify how we define a “Christian-Democratic” party. This is especially important for countries in East-Central Europe. According to Bale and Szczerbiak (2008: 481–482), Christian-Democratic parties have five essential characteristics. First, they are “committed to the idea of society as an organic whole.” As a result they stress the importance of negotiations and compromise. Second, they are champions of strong families and traditional values. Third, they are moderately supportive of the market economy. Fourth, in international relations they emphasize the importance of reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. Finally, their program is rooted in Christian ethics, but they are not simply controlled or operated by the Church hierarchy.

While Christian-Democratic parties are present and electorally successful (with some prominent exceptions) in Western Europe (Kalyvas and van Kersbergen, 2010), they are weak or nonexistent in East-Central Europe (Grzymala-Busse, 2013). Perhaps most surprisingly, there is no Christian-Democratic party in Poland— despite the fact that it is “a nation where practising Roman Catholics make up around 95 percent of the population” (Bale and Szczerbiak, 2008: 480). A number of Polish parties in the 1990s did describe themselves as “Christian-Democratic,” but they differed substantially from Western European Christian-Democrats. Much like what holds for PiS today, their ideology was “characterized by a strong emphasis on national-patriotic themes” which is in contrast with a more universalist positions of Western Christian-Democrats (Bale and Szczerbiak, 2008: 484). This can be perceived as a result of the “fusion of Polish ethnic identity and statehood with Catholicism” (Stanley, 2016: 112).

A similar closeness between nationalism and Christianity can be observed in Hungary. Due to limited role of religion and greater denominational heterogeneity, however, the cooperation between the main right-wing party, Fidesz, and Christian Churches is neither as manifest nor as electorally relevant as in Poland. For Fidesz, Christianity “signifies a degree of social conservatism and traditional nationalism rather than substantive religious reference” (Ádám and Bozóki, 2016b: 139). In its most extreme form, this type of nationalism contrasts “national Christianity” with “the mainstream, universal form of Christianity as a religion of love” (Ádám and Bozóki, 2016b: 146). In contrast to Poland, Hungary has—at least officially—a party that describes itself as Christian-Democratic: the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP). Since 2006, however, the KDNP has completely lost its independence through its cooperation with Fidesz. As a result of the merger between the two parties, the “KDNP has effectively given up its separate political identity and become a Fidesz-satellite, endorsing […] ‘Christianity’ by its sheer name” (Ádám and Bozóki, 2016a: 111). Due to the takeover of the KDNP by Fidesz, it can no longer be considered a stand-alone Christian-Democratic party.

Somewhat paradoxically, the only country in East-Central Europe that does have a prominent Christian-Democratic presence is the most secular European nation, Czechia. The Christian and Democratic Union-Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU-CŠL) closely resembles its Western European counterparts. It is a moderate pro-systemic party that refers to Christian values. Because of the high levels of secularism in the Czech society, however, the party only attracts the support of between 4% and 9% of the electorate.² Grzymala-Busse (2013: 332) explains the continued presence of the KDU-CŠL in Czechia as a result of the legacy of the interwar period, when Czech Christian-Democrats gained reputation of being a “consistently centrist, administratively competent, moderate governing party.” Furthermore, the opposition between the German-dominated Catholic hierarchy and the liberally-minded proponents of Czech national revival dating back to the early 19th century explain why Christianity and nationalism have remained separate movements in Czechia (Fiala, 2009: 94). These conditions allowed for the emergence of a moderate Christian Democracy free of nationalist undertones.

Finally, there are several prominent moderate center-right parties in East-Central Europe, which belong to the European People’s Party, but differ substantively from typical Christian-Democratic parties. Examples include the Estonian Isamaa, characterized as a conservative pro-free market party. Others are a centrist, secular and market-liberal Civic Platform (PO) in Poland, the moderately conservative, pro-EU Czech Tradition Responsibility Prosperity (TOP09) or the agrarian Polish People’s Party (PSL). As argued by Grzymala-Busse (2013: 338) all these parties may be considered as conservative (or conservative-liberal in case of the PO), but should not be classified as Christian-Democratic.

In line with our third hypothesis, our expectation is that the (near) absence of Christian-Democratic parties—in the Western meaning of this concept—in most East-Central European countries, will affect the link between religion and the PRR vote there. The reason is that the niche that Christian-Democrats occupy elsewhere, i.e. appealing to the most religious sections of the electorate, has been filled by PRR groupings (especially in Poland and Hungary), that consciously exploit the fusion of national and religious identities.

Data and methods

To study the link between religion and voting for PRR parties in Europe, for the recent period, we use the data from the eighth round of the European Social Survey (2016). Our focus is on countries that participated in this round of the ESS, but we restricted the analyses to countries where at least one PRR party—as defined by PopuList (Rooduijn et al., 2019) was represented in the parliament. This implies we rely on data from 15 countries where at least one viable populist radical right party was active at the time of data collection (i.e., 2016/2017—see Appendix C).³

The analysis proceeds in two steps. First, we explore the link between religion and voting for PRR parties by estimating country-specific regression models for each of the 15 countries. To take into account the multi-party structure of the countries in our data set, we estimate multinomial logit models in which we explain respondents’ reported vote in the most recent election for a country’s primary legislative assembly.⁴ We include all parties that received the support of at least 2% of the respondents in a country sample.⁵ Abstainers are coded as missing.

To examine the connection between religion and voting for a PRR party in particular, we subsequently calculate the average marginal effect of religion on the likelihood that a respondent supports each of the 18 PRR parties in the data set (cf. Appendix C). To offer more context, we also compare the effects for PRR parties with effects recorded for Christian-Democrats in particular.

In a second step we explicitly test our hypothesis regarding the conditional effect of Christian-Democratic parties through a pooled model. For these analyses, we dichotomize the dependent variable and focus on the distinction between those having voted for a PRR party (coded as 1) and those voting for any other party (coded as 0). We estimate a logistic regression model, in which we include an interaction between religion and the electoral strength of the Christian-Democratic parties in each country.

Our key independent variable is religion, and we focus on religiosity in particular. To operationalize religiosity, many studies have applied some form of a composite index of different indicators (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009; Lubbers et al., 2002; van der Brug and Fennema, 2003). We take a different approach and focus on one key indicator of religiosity: church attendance, using the full variation of responses to this question. By choosing the indicator of church attendance, we concentrate specifically on the link between a respondent and an institutionalized Christian church, embracing the observation made by Putnam and Campbell (2010: 473) that: “it is belonging that matters, not believing.” This is particularly relevant in the context of a cross-country comparison as ours, because different predisposition of religious voters to support PRR parties may be related to different positions represented by the Christian churches in a given country. In particular because of the inclusion of countries from across Europe, those cross-country differences are more important than denominational differences, which are specific only for a sub-sample of countries.^{6, 7} Church attendance is measured on a scale from 1 to 7. The original order of the codes was reversed. In the variable used in the analysis the value of 1 stands for “never,” 2 “less often,” 3 “only on special holidays,” 4 “at least once a month,” 5 “once a week,” 6 “more than once a week,” and 7 “every day.” Non-Christian religious respondents were excluded from the analysis.

Figure 1 shows the average levels of church attendance across countries, pointing to the generally low level of religiosity—across countries. With the exception of Poland, the mean answer in all countries can be understood as attending a church less often than on special holidays. In five countries, the median selected response was “never” (Belgium, Czechia, France, United Kingdom and the Netherlands), meaning at least half of the respondents chose that option. Poland is the obvious outlier in this set of European countries, with a mean amounting to roughly 4 (at least once a month) and a plurality of respondents declaring weekly church attendance. The share of respondents declaring church attendance in Poland (roughly 42%) corresponds with the estimates reported by the Polish Statistical Institute of the Catholic Church (ISKK, see Flieger and Wilgocki, 2018).

Figure 1.

Reversed church attendance (1: never, 7: daily) by country based on the ESS (2016). Data: ESS 2016.

While our focus is on the effect of religiosity (church attendance) on voting for PRR parties, we include a number of important control variables. First, we account for respondents’ self-placement on a left-right scale. Given that we are interested in those parties that the PopuList project identified as not only populist but also radical right, we expect to find a positive correlation between a respondent’s self-placement on the left-right scale and the likelihood that she votes for a populist radical right party. Left-right positions are measured on an 11-point scale that ranges from 0 (left) to 10 (right).

We also include a number of socio-demographic controls in the analyses. It has long been established that “male voters, young voters, voters with low or middle levels of education and voters from certain social classes are more likely to vote for radical right parties than are other electors” (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009: 985). We account for this by means of controls for respondents’ age, the quadratic age term, gender and income as well as level of education. Respondents included in the ESS survey 2016 were between 15 and 105 years old (mean age of 48.91). We centered the age variable before adding it to the analyses in order to avoid collinearity with the quadratic age term, which we include to account for the differences in support for PRR parties between the middle-aged individuals on the one hand and young and elderly individuals on the other. Gender is operationalized as a dummy (1 female, 0 male). The income variable refers to the country-specific net income decile of the respondent’s household. Its values range from 1 (first decile) to 10 (10th decile). As a final socio-demographic variable, we include a respondent’s education level using the seven-point ISCED classification.

As indicated, the party-specific models rely on a multinomial logistic regression. For testing the third hypothesis, we estimate a pooled binary logistic regression model.⁸ Following the approach suggested by Möhring (2012), we include in this model country dummies and an interaction between church attendance and the percentage of vote attained by a Christian-Democratic party at the last election. We do not include the electoral result of Christian-Democrats as a stand-alone variable, because its effect for individual countries is already accounted for by the use of country dummies (Möhring, 2012).

Empirical results

Church attendance and voting for populist radical right parties: Party- and country-specific analyses

To examine the relation between religion and voting for PRR parties, we estimate 15 separate multinomial logistic regressions, for each of the countries included in the data set. Given the large number of models and estimates, we present the results in a concise manner. The full results are reported in Appendix F. Readers who look at these models in more detail, will be reassured to see that most control variables have the expected effects on the vote (for PRR parties in particular). Figure 2 summarizes the core results visually, by showing the average marginal effect of church attendance on citizens’ likelihood to support PRR parties.

Figure 2.

The effect of church attendance on voting for a populist radical right-wing party. Data: ESS 2016. Estimates are average marginal effects, holding control variables at observed values. The spikes represent 90% (thick lines) and 95% (thin lines) respectively.

We discuss three groups of parties in turn, beginning with PRR parties near the bottom of Figure 2. Except for Kukiz’15, addressed later, these are Western European parties that enjoy substantively less support of the more religious voters, in line with Hypothesis 2. This first group of parties includes the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the French Front National (FN, currently Rassemblement National), the Swedish Democrats (SD) and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

For each of these parties, the effect of church attendance on the likelihood that voters support these parties is quite substantive, even though overall low levels of church attendance in Western Europe may somewhat obscure the effects. Effects are significant, but of limited size in Sweden and Germany. In Germany, for example, the least religious voters—who never attend church—have a probability of roughly 4% of voting for the AfD.⁹ Among those who participate in services once a week, the probability of voting for the AfD drops to 0.9%.

In Austria, Switzerland, France and the Netherlands, where PRR parties were electorally stronger at the time when the survey was conducted, the impact of religiosity is particularly large, with average marginal effects between −0.03 and −0.05. For example, the probability of supporting the Dutch PVV among the least religious voters, who never attend religious services, amounts to roughly 11% as compared to 1.7% estimated for voters attending services once a week. A similar trend emerges in Switzerland and in Austria, but the probabilities are higher, reflecting the greater overall electoral support for the SVP or the FPÖ. Roughly 30% of the least religious voters declare support for the SVP and 25% for the FPÖ. In the religiously observant subsection of the electorate (attends church once a week) the willingness to vote for the populist radical right parties is substantively lower in both countries. It amounts to 11% for both the SVP and the FPÖ. As can be seen in Figure 2, voting for the French FN is also negatively correlated with church attendance. The probabilities of voting FN drop from roughly 16% among religiously inactive voters to about 6% in the group of voters who report attending church once a week. For UKIP and SD we also find a significant negative effect of church attendance.

A second group consists of parties for which we do not find a significant effect of church attendance on the likelihood that voters support them, and for which the estimated effect is close to zero. This group includes the Finns Party (formerly True Finns: PS), the Norwegian Progress Party (FrP), the Italian Lega (Formerly Lega Nord), the Brothers of Italy (FdI) and the Belgian Flemish Interest (VB). For each of these parties holds that they are about equally likely to obtain support of religious and secular voters. Figure 2 shows that the direction of the effect of church attendance is generally consistent with Hypothesis 2 (i.e., negative) in all but one case: the Italian FdI (but even then it is not significant).

The final group of parties consists of the PRR parties in the four East-Central European countries: the Polish Law and Justice (PiS) party, the Polish Kukiz’15 party, the Czech Usvit party, the Estonian EKRE party, and the Hungarian parties Fidesz and Jobbik. In contrast to what we observed for parties in Western Europe, for some of these parties we find indications of a positive association between church attendance and voting for a populist radical right-wing party. In particular, PiS and Fidesz attract voters who attend religious services more often—a pattern that is consistent with Hypothesis 1. In the case of Usvit and EKRE, the effect of church attendance is close to zero, though for these parties as well, the coefficients of church attendance are positive. In the East-Central European countries where two populist right-wing parties were identified, i.e. Poland and Hungary, effects differ for the main and the smaller PRR parties. While the effects of church attendance on supporting PiS and Fidesz are positive, the coefficients for Kukiz’15 and Jobbik are negative (cf. H2) though for Jobbik the coefficient does not reach the conventional level of statistical significance.

The effect of church attendance is strongest for PiS. The most secular Poles vote for PiS with a probability of roughly 23%. For those declaring weekly participation in church service, the predicted support for PiS soars to 49%. A similar pattern emerges for Fidesz, a party that is ideologically closely related with PiS. The probability that Hungarians vote for the Fidesz based on respondents’ declarations increases from 64% among most secular voters to 73% for weekly churchgoers.

Importantly, while we find substantial heterogeneity in the effects of church attendance on voting for a PRR party, additional analyses suggest that these differences are unlikely to be driven by the different socio-demographic profiles of those going to church in each of the 15 countries included. As can be seen from Appendix D, across countries women and older citizens consistently go to church more. While there are differences between countries in terms of the income, education level, or the place of living of the most religious, these differences do not seem to be systematic—and do not point to important differences in the profiles of the more religious in East and West.

Putting the effects in context: The role of Christian-democrats

The effects of church attendance on support for PRR parties must be interpreted in the context of a given national party system to fully appreciate their implications. In particular, we argue that the presence of Christian-Democratic parties is crucial to understand whether and to what extent the most religious will be drawn to PRR parties.

That argument is based on the assumption that Christian-Democratic parties, when they compete, attract the support of the most religious. In the data set, we identified nine Christian-Democratic parties.¹⁰ In a first step, we verified whether being more religious increases citizens’ likelihood to support these parties. As can be seen from supplementary analyses reported in Appendix E, every Christian-Democratic party in the data set attracts substantive support of religious voters. Without a single exception, the average marginal effect of church attendance on the likelihood to supporting a Christian-Democratic party is positive, and significantly different from zero.

Furthermore, in line with our expectations, in several of the countries where we found the more religious to be less likely to support the populist radical right (cf. Figure 2), religion has a strong and positive effect on voting for the Christian-Democratic option (ÖVP in Austria, CVP in Switzerland, CDU/CSU in Germany, KD in Sweden, and CDA in the Netherlands). These findings are suggestive of the idea that Christian Democracy can serve as a “vaccine” for voters against the populist radical right. In France, where no Christian-Democratic party competes, another party seemingly takes a similar role. As can be seen from the full results in Appendix F, the formally secular UMP (now Les Republicains), a member of the European People’s Party faction in the European Parliament, also gains also support among the more religious. However, this pattern cannot be generalized to other EPP member parties, suggesting the presence of Christian-Democratic parties is key, not that of a right-wing mainstream party in general. The United Kingdom seems to be somewhat of an exception, as the data show a negative effect of religion on the likelihood of voting for the PRR party UKIP, even though no Christian-Democratic or Conservative party attracts the religious votes. The only UK party that seems to attract religious voters is the Greens (see Appendix F).

What about the second set of countries (Finland, Norway, Belgium and Italy), where we found no indication of a significant relation between church attendance and supporting the populist radical right? Finland, Norway and Belgium have Christian-Democratic parties. And the results suggest these parties gain support among the most religious (see Appendix E). However, it should be noted that the support for Christian Democracy in Finland and Norway is limited overall. Even if the more religious have a significantly higher likelihood of supporting these parties, their overall vote share in recent elections is only about 6% for the KrF and less than 3% in case of the Finnish KD. Italy lacks an explicitly Christian-Democratic party since the demise of Democrazia Cristiana in 1994 (except for the marginal UdC). The null-results with respect to the relationship between church attendance and a vote for populist radical right parties in Finland, Norway and Italy could thus be related to the (near) absence of strong Christian-Democrats. Belgium, however, is a rather unexpected case. Christian-Democrats dominated Belgian politics for most of the post-World War 2 period and belonged to all governments between 1945 and 1999 (except 1954–1958). They still retain their position as one of the largest parties, especially in the Flanders.¹¹

In countries of East-Central Europe the situation is rather different. In the absence of Christian-Democratic parties in Poland and Hungary, it is the PRR parties that appear to attract the support of religious voters consistently with the expected effect of religious nationalism.¹² The only real exception is Czechia, where a small, but competitive Christian-Democratic party attracts the support of most religious voters.

Interestingly, the existence of a PRR party that gains the support of religious voters in Poland and Hungary has not prevented the emergence of minor PRR parties, like Kukiz’15 and Jobbik, that seem to attract less observant groups. As far as this issue is concerned, both parties are more similar to their Western European counterparts than to their larger national competitors.

Overall, these results are, with few exceptions, consistent with our expectations. We find that the effect of church attendance on the likelihood of supporting the PRR varies between countries. And, in line with Hypothesis 3, the effect is negative in most countries that have a strong Christian-Democratic party, while there are no Christian-Democratic parties in the few countries where the effect of church attendance on supporting a populist radical right party is positive. The results from these country-specific models, however, are only suggestive. In what follows, we offer a more formal test of the moderating role of Christian-Democratic parties on the relation between church attendance and voting for a PRR party. We estimate a pooled model, that includes the data from all countries and switch to a binary dependent variable to capture whether a respondent supported a PRR party (value 1) or not (value 0). To test Hypothesis 3, we focus on the interaction between church attendance and the vote share that Christian-Democratic parties obtain in a country. Before estimating this interactive model, we estimate a model that only includes the main effect of church attendance (Pooled Model 1). Besides the control variables, taken into consideration in the country-specific models, this pooled model also includes country fixed effects. By doing so, we allow different intercepts in the PRR vote for every country (but slopes remain identical). The results of this model, that are reported in Table 1, show a negative and significant average effect of church attendance on voting for a populist radical right party in Europe.

Table 1.

Pooled models with country fixed effects.

	(1) Pooled 1	(2) Pooled 2	(3) Pooled 3
Left-Right	0.36*** (0.02)	0.35*** (0.02)	0.35*** (0.02)
Age (cent.)	0.01*** (0.00)	0.01*** (0.00)	0.01*** (0.00)
Age (cent.) sq	−0.00*** (0.00)	−0.00*** (0.00)	−0.00*** (0.00)
Female	−0.24** (0.08)	−0.27*** (0.08)	−0.25** (0.08)
Income	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)	−0.02 (0.02)
Education	−0.09*** (0.02)	−0.08*** (0.02)	−0.09*** (0.02)
Urban	−0.26** (0.10)	−0.24* (0.10)	−0.27** (0.10)
Church Attendance	−0.06* (0.03)	−0.26*** (0.07)	−0.00 (0.03)
Church Attendance × Christ.-Dem.			−0.01*** (0.00)
	+ Country FE	+ Country FE × Church Att.	+ Country FE
Constant	−2.76*** (0.18)	−2.22*** (0.24)	−2.05*** (0.24)
Pseudo R2	0.261	0.270	0.263
Log-pseudolikelihood	−5326.75	−5256.99	−5312.40
Observations	21013	21013	21013

Note: Standard errors in parentheses.

* p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

As we saw from the party-specific models, this average effect hides important heterogeneity in the impact of religion between countries. In a pooled framework, we can allow for the slopes of church attendance to vary by including interactions between church attendance and the fixed effects (Pooled Model 2). The country-specific predicted probabilities of voting for a PRR party, for different levels of church attendance, that we obtain from this model are plotted in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Predicted probability of populist radical right vote: Western Europe (Pooled Model 2).

Figures 3 and 4 show even more clearly what we already saw. That is, differences between the two regions. While the effect of church attendance on voting for a PRR party is mostly negative in Western Europe (Figure 3), it is positive in two of the four countries of East-Central Europe (Figure 4). Is variation in the strength of Christian Democracy in the two regions accounting for this result, as we hypothesize (Hypothesis 3)?

Figure 4.

Predicted probability of populist radical right vote: East-Central Europe (Pooled Model 2).

To answer this question, we estimate a pooled model 3 that includes an interaction between church attendance and the Christian-Democratic vote share in recent elections.¹³ To interpret this interaction effect, we again turn to a visual representation of predicted probabilities of voting for a PRR party by church attendance. We do so at three levels of support for Christian-Democratic parties (0%, 15% and 30%). As can be seen from Figure 5, the strength of Christian Democracy indeed moderates, significantly, the effect of religion on voting for a PRR party. That is, in countries where Christian-Democrats are relatively weak or nonexistent (roughly 0% of vote in recent elections), no effect of church attendance can be observed. Independent of level of church attendance the probability of casting vote for a PRR party amounts to between 10.2% and 10.3%. When Christian-Democrats gain electoral strength, we can clearly observe a negative slope of the regression curves. In political systems where they are supported by roughly 15% of the electorate, the probability of voting for a populist radical right party amounts to roughly 9.3% among least religious voters as compared to roughly 4.6% among most religious voters. The effect is stronger when the Christian-Democratic vote share increases to 30%. In such contexts, those who never attend church vote for PRR parties with a probability of 8.3%, which does not substantively differ from the 0%-scenario or from the 15%-scenario. But among those who participate in religious services on a daily basis the probability of casting a vote for right-wing populists goes down to roughly 1.9% in countries with strong Christian Democracies, which is significantly lower than 10.2% expected in political systems with very weak or nonexistent Christian-Democratic parties. An alternative specification (see Appendix G) using vote share of EPP parties instead of vote share of Christian-Democratic parties does not result in a similar pattern, suggesting that the observed effect is related to electoral strength of a Christian Democracy, not simply center-right parties.

Figure 5.

Predicted probability of populist vote and church attendance depending on percentage of Christian-Democratic vote with 95% confidence intervals: Pooled Model 3.

Discussion

We studied, in a comprehensive manner and with recent data, the relation between religion and voting for PRR parties in Europe. The decline of Christian Democracy throughout Europe—that traditionally served as a “vaccine” against the radical right (Arzheimer and Carter, 2009)—and the emergence of a religious right in non-European countries led us to investigate whether, in Europe as well, a religious right is emerging.

Our results suggest that there is little chance for the emergence of a religious right, as we know it from the United States, in Europe. On average, religiousness (i.e., church attendance) is negatively related with a vote for PRR parties. There are, however, some exceptions to this general finding. In some countries of East-Central Europe, religious voters demonstrate a high propensity to support the far-right. The effect is particularly strong where a fusion of national and religious identities led to the emergence of “religious nationalism.” Unfortunately, our data do not allow verifying whether these results generalize to the whole region. As many of the parties described as right-wing populist have emerged only recently, more empirical data need to be collected in future.

More substantively, the difference between patterns in Western and in East-Central Europe seems to correlate with the strength of Christian-Democratic parties. Our results also suggest that Christian-Democrats—when they are strong—are still able to contain the expansion of the PRR parties into the religious sections of the society. This inoculation effect, however, is not driven by center-right parties more generally. As far as their impact on relationship between religious voters and PRR parties is concerned, the Christian-Democrats and secular moderate conservatives are not “functionally equivalent” as sometimes argued (Bale and Krouwel, 2013: 19; Gidron and Ziblatt, 2019: 24).

Another relevant factor, which we do not discuss in detail in our study, is the role of the institutional Church. In Western Europe the clergy is rather progressively oriented, especially as far as multiculturalism is concerned. Some Christian Churches in East-Central Europe, e.g. the Catholic Church in Poland, on the contrary, stand for nationalism and sometimes even openly endorse populist radical right (Markowski, 2016). A similar phenomenon was described in Hungary (Ádám and Bozóki, 2016a). While our data do not allow examining the role of the clergy and the clerical elite, our results definitely call for more research on their role in limiting or strengthening the connection between religion and support for the radical right.

Finally, our analyses confirm the opinion by Elff and Roßteutscher (2017) that religion remains a factor worth taking into consideration in the analysis of voting behavior in European contexts. This holds, furthermore, despite the trend toward secularization. Its relevance varies, however, depending on a country’s specific context. Overall, and in contrast to what holds in the United States, religious voters in Western Europe are rather skeptical of the right-wing populism. In East-Central Europe, however, especially in Poland and in Hungary, the most devout Christians form the pillar of populist radical right movements displaying authoritarian tendencies.

Supplemental material

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ppq-10.1177_1354068820985187 - Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-ppq-10.1177_1354068820985187 for Do religious voters support populist radical right parties? Opposite effects in Western and East-Central Europe by Kamil Marcinkiewicz and Ruth Dassonneville in Party Politics

Footnotes

Authors’ note

Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2018 EPSA Annual Conference, the 2019 ECPR General Conference and the 2020 ECPR General Conference. We thank participants for suggestions and feedback. We are in particular indebted to Matthias Dilling for his very detailed reading and helpful recommendations. We also thank Achim Goerres, Michael Jankowski and Fernando Feitosa for their comments on a previous version of this paper.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ruth Dassonneville

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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