The Greek Green voter: environmentalism or protest?

The Changing Cleavage Politics of Western Europe

“…This alignment finds expression in various different ways, depending on the mix of political parties available in the national electoral context. Higher education consistently predicts support for European green parties (Dolezal 2010), which typically pair social liberalism with a distinctive internationalist and environmentalist ideology that graduates find appealing (Rüdig 2012, Vasilopoulos & Demertzis 2013, Beaudonnet & Vasilopoulos 2014, Grant & Tilley 2019). Green parties have surged in recent elections in the Netherlands and Belgium, secured their best-ever European Parliament election results in 2019, and in Germany have overtaken the traditional center-left Social Democratic Party as the main competitor to the Christian Democratic Union, leading in some polls.…”

Green parties in hard times

“…According to Inglehart's classic argument, the rise of education and economic well-being in post-war Western societies has created generations of voters who are more interested in quality of life issues such as freedom of speech or the protection of the environment than traditional political issues such as economic growth, inflation or fighting crime. In accordance with the post-materialist value profile, past research has shown that Green voters are significantly more likely to rank the environment as a particularly important issue than the rest of the electorate is (Dolezal, 2010;Franklin and Rüdig, 1992;Vasilopoulos and Demertzis, 2013). What is more, Müller-Rommel has found a positive influence of economic growth and low unemployment on the electoral success of Green parties in Europe (1998).…”

“…By and large, the literature on the electoral bases of Green parties across Europe points to a coherent and homogeneous demographic voter profile that lies in accordance with the parties' left-libertarian and post-materialist platform (Dolezal, 2010;Knutsen, 2004). Even though there is country-level variation, European Green voters tend to be young (Dolezal, 2010;Franklin and Rüdig, 1992;Müller-Rommel, 2002), female (Knutsen, 2004;Rüdig, 2012), living in urban centres (Dolezal, 2010) and highly educated (Dolezal, 2010;Knutsen, 2004;Vasilopoulos and Demertzis, 2013). In turn, this distinct demographic composition reflects a particular set of political attitudes, with Green voters having been described as cosmopolitan and libertarian (Dolezal, 2010).…”