Redistribution attitudes and vote choice across the educational divide

Abstract

How does the educational divide impact contemporary redistributive politics in the knowledge economy? Traditional political economy models which see education as a labour market asset predict the relatively secure educated will oppose redistribution, while the precarious less-educated will support it. In contrast, a conception of education as a marker of social status suggests that the less-educated may be more inclined than status-secure university graduates to draw harsh boundaries against welfare state beneficiaries as a means to maintain social esteem. Building on both theoretical approaches, I analyze 2016 European Social Survey data from 15 Western European countries. I find that education has a negative relationship to support for an expansive welfare state. By contrast, education is strongly positively associated with perceptions of welfare state beneficiaries as deserving. This has implications for education as a structural divide in electoral politics. Evidence that attitudes towards the scope of the welfare state mediate the effects of education on vote choice is mixed. However, KHB mediation analyses decomposing the effects of education on vote choice reveal that deservingness perceptions are a particularly substantial mediator of education effects on voting for radical right and green parties. This explains in part why these parties represent the poles of the educational divide, whose attitudinal basis is usually understood to be socio-cultural rather than redistributive.

From nationalism to educational divide? Party positions and voters’ profiles on welfare state issues in Estonia and Latvia in the 2010s

“…The predictor of voter profiles is not the party voted for but most strongly the level of education. This accords with recent studies claiming the level of education to become the new structural divide in electoral politics (Ansell & Gingrich, 2021;Attewell, 2021;Beramendi et al, 2015;Gethin et al, 2021).…”

“…People with higher education and income tend to be voters of the left-open profile (see the visualisation of predicted probabilities of education and income levels across voter profiles in Figure 5). This finding is in accordance with empirical evidence of the growing trend of socio-cultural professionals to vote for left liberals (Abou-Chadi et al, 2021;Attewell, 2021;. In addition to higher education and income, left-open voters are younger and of the ethnic majority (see the visualisation of those in Appendix 5).…”

“…Thus, in Western Europe, identity issues have gained more prominence than before, although this shift has occurred relatively recently. Furthermore, along with the growing diversity of class-based constituencies, the education divide indicates the divergence of high-and low-educated voters' preferences across all dimensions of policy space (Ansell & Gingrich, 2021;Attewell, 2021;Beramendi et al, 2015).…”

“…The deservingness argument has gained importance with the growing popularity of radical right and welfare chauvinism, under which the cultural and economic arguments are closely entwined (Busemeyer et al, 2021). Furthermore, Attewell (2021) argues this attitudinal multidimensionality of welfare preferences, i.e., the degree of state involvement in wealth (re)distribution and the question of who deserves welfare support, helps to explain how the educational divide in party politics is an expression of redistributive conflict. The level of education is associated with vote choice both directly and indirectly, via differences in attitudes not just about the proper scope of the welfare state, but even more strongly about the deservingness of welfare state beneficiaries (Attewell, 2021).…”

The Social Bases of Political Parties: A New Measure and Survey

“…parties and TAN parties have retained, and even reinforced, their distinctive social composition(Abou-Chadi and Hix 2021: 84;Attewell 2021;Marks et al 2020). …”