Christian Religiosity and Voting for West European Radical Right Parties

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between Christian religiosity and the support for radical right parties in Western Europe. Drawing on theories of electoral choice and on socio-psychological literature largely ignored by scholars of electoral behaviour, it suggests and tests a number of competing hypotheses. The findings demonstrate that while religiosity has few direct effects, and while religious people are neither more nor less hostile towards ethnic minorities and thereby neither more nor less prone to vote for a radical right party, they are not ‘available’ to these parties because they are still firmly attached to Christian Democratic or conservative parties. However, given increasing de-alignment, this ‘vaccine effect’ is likely to become weaker with time.