Cultural Backlash? Trends in Opinion Polarisation between Educational Groups in Five European Countries

Abstract

We study trends in attitudes towards cultural issues between high and low educated citizens in France, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, and Poland. Drawing on Norris and Inglehart´s (2019) cultural backlash theory, we expect to find a widening attitudinal gap between low- and high-educated citizens that is driven by the faster adoption of libertarian values by the higher educated. We draw on six items measuring attitudes towards immigrants, LGTBQI+ and gender role that have been repeatedly asked in the European Values Study (1980-2020) and European Social Survey (2001-2021). We use ordered logistic regression analyses to calculate time trends and to adjust for compositional change within educational groups. Our results show the hypothesized trend pattern for three LGTBQI+ and gender role items in Hungary and Poland, two gender role items in France and one immigration item in Italy. We conclude that the cultural backlash theory might be most applicable to Hungary and Poland but cannot convincingly explain opinion trends between educational groups on cultural issues in Italy, France and Sweden.