Voting for the populist radical right in Western Europe

In this chapter we show that voters with lower education are more likely to vote for the populist radical right in Western Europe than voters with higher education. Furthermore, we show that while education is strongly related to occupational class, an education effect on the populist radical right vote exists that does not operate through occupational class. Additionally, we show that occupational class and education are to differing degrees associated with key issues in the two-dimensional political space of contemporary Western Europe (Kitschelt 1994, 1995; Kriesi et al. 2008b; Kriesi 2010). Class is most strongly related to the economic left–right dimension, while education is more strongly related to the libertarian–authoritarian dimension.