A Dutch New Party and the Revival of Socio-Economic Background Voting

Comparative European Politics https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-019-00189-y

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival of socio‑economic background voting

J. H. P. van Spanje1 · R. Azrout1

Abstract Western democracies have witnessed gradual decline of voting according to socio- economic background factors. However, the emergence of elderly parties suggests increasing mobilization along generational lines, which would partly reverse this pattern. While religion and class voting have decreased, such new generational divide might make age, education and income salient (again). However, to what extent is support for these parties driven by such mobilization—rather than by a-political protest, or by politics as usual? Focusing on 50Plus in the Netherlands, the most successful current Western elderly party, we fnd evidence for mobilization on a new divide. Many older, less educated voters who feel poor vote for 50Plus, irrespective of their feelings of mere protest or their position on dominant policy issues. Furthermore, perceptions of 50Plus substantially vary with age and income combined. Our fndings suggest that 50Plus heralds the emergence of a novel divide. To what extent this divide revitalizes socio-economic background factors in Western politics remains to be seen.

Keywords New parties · Elderly parties · Elections · Socio-economic background · Economic voting

Many established democracies have seen a decline of socio-economic background voting in recent decades. This decline has probably started prior to 1960 in some countries, while it had already been completed by then elsewhere (Franklin 1992: 394). Franklin and his collaborators saw such decline by examining age, gender, class, church attendance, education, and urban residence in 16 Western countries (Franklin et al. 2009). Evans and De Graaf (2013: 399) see “evidence of such decline”, focusing on religion and class voting in 17 countries in total. Although they do not fnd decline “across the board”, the general trend is downward.

* R. Azrout [email protected]

1 Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Vol.:(0123456789) J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout

However, democratic systems are constantly in fux. Most importantly, new political ideas are being infused into the everyday politics of these systems on a perma- nent basis. This means that one has to entertain the possibility of a stop, a change, or even a reversal, of the decline of socio-economic background voting. New ideas are often carried by new political parties. It is possible that a category of new parties would turn the present-day electoral logic in established democracies on its head. An obvious candidate to do so would be a party type that aims to mobilize a socio- economic category such as voters of a certain age, educational level, or income. Concerning age, education, and income, seniors’ parties are “a potential new party family in the making” (Hanley 2010: 2). They have sprung up across the Western world. In Western Europe, only three countries “saw no grey interest parties form: Iceland, Ireland and France” (Hanley 2010: 3). In Eastern Europe, Hanley (2010: 4) found pensioners’ parties everywhere except in Albania, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova. Pensioners’ parties have held government ofce in Israel, Serbia, and Slovenia—in Croatia a grey party supported a minority government (Hanley 2010: 5). The present study focuses on today’s most successful of all, a Dutch party called ‘50Plus’. In 2017, the party underlined its electoral success by doubling its number of seats in the Dutch national parliament. This study analyses the characteristics of its electorate. It tests to what extent the vote for this party is driven by the longstanding cleavages that have dominated Western politics, by traditional ideological and issue voting, by new issue voting, by a-political protest, or by a new divide. In doing so, this study addresses the questions of to what extent a new divide has become visible, what this divide entails, and to what degree the divide is likely to infuence Western electoral politics in the near future.

The socio‑economic background vote

Socio-economic background voting is commonly linked to “cleavage” structures. In their classic account, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) describe such cleavages as enduring lines of confict in democratic politics that stem from large-scale socio-structural transformation processes. Lipset and Rokkan identify four cleavage types: church versus state, capital versus labour, urban versus rural, and centre versus periphery. In accordance with Evans and De Graaf (2013), we restrict our literature review to religion and class voting here, relating to the frst- and second-mentioned cleavage— arguably the most prominent of the four in most European countries today. Religion voting has declined in many Western countries. A study of six countries demonstrates decline of religion in voting behaviour in the Netherlands between 1970 and 1998 but not in the fve other democracies (Brooks et al. 2006). The efect of religion on voting in the 1989 European elections was stronger than in more recent ones (Van der Brug et al. 2009). Yet religion continues to be an important factor for the conservative and Christian Democratic vote (Van der Brug et al. 2009; Duncan 2015). Class voting has decreased in several Western countries too (Evans and De Graaf 2013). There is evidence of declining class voting in several countries such Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival… as Britain (Franklin and Mughan 1978; Heath 2013), and Switzerland (Rennwald 2014). A study of twenty Western democracies from 1945 until 1990 fnds increasingly diminishing class voting in a majority of these countries (Nieuwbeerta 1996). Brooks et al. (2006) fnd class voting in two out of six countries trending downward. A more recent study of ffteen Western countries from 1960 until 2005 also fnds an increasingly weaker link between social class and left-wing versus right-wing voting over time in most of these democracies (Jansen et al. 2013). Taken together, socio-economic factors explain increasingly less of party choice in Western democracies. At present, religion and class do not explain much of the variance in voters’ electoral preferences (cf. van der Eijk and Franklin 2009). Obvi- ously, this situation may change. Religion, class, or other characteristics such as education, income or age may start to play a larger role at any given time in any given place. Regarding education, income, and (most importantly) age, this may already be the case right now in several countries. This is because new societal and political actors have started to mobilize on a generational divide, pitting (especially the less educated yet wealthier) elder parts of the electorate against (in particular the poorer) younger voters. A key role here is played by a particular type of political actor, new political parties. After all, established actors and parties are “programmatically infexible” (Hooghe and Marks forthcoming, p. 1) so that change mostly comes from new parties—just as in this case.

New parties

The mid-20th-century party systems were said to be “frozen” (Lipset and Rok- kan 1967). In accordance with this observation, these systems saw few new parties emerge. Unsurprisingly, most of the literature on new parties is quite recent (e.g. Hug 2001; Tavits 2006; Bolleyer 2013; Grotz and Weber 2015; Van de Wardt et al. 2017). At a time when new parties were hardly studied except in the context of US politics (Pinard 1971; Sundquist 1983), Hauss and Rayside (1978) were among the frst to study new parties in several Western countries. Hauss and Rayside saw a link between political cleavage structures, demand for particular new policy issues, and the emergence of new parties. Studies by Rosenstone et al. (1984) and by Harmel and Robertson (1985) underlined the importance of social, political and structural factors, including new policy issues. More generally, it was found that “neglected or new issues are often at the heart of the emergence of new parties” (Hug 2001, p.3; cf. Zons 2015). New parties have been divided into “challenging parties”, that mobilize on existing cleavages, and “mobilizing parties”, that mobilize on new issues and identities (Rochon 1985). Lucardie (2000) built on this distinction, calling the frst “purifying parties”, the latter “prophetic parties”, and adding a third category of “prolocutors”. Prolocutors are parties that mobilize on new issues without claiming to have any broader coherent ideology to build from. Clearly, prophetic parties and prolocutors that succeed in mobilizing a sizeable electoral support can alter electoral politics in J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout ways that undercut vestigial patterns of socio-economic background voting—or, in fact, introduce or reinforce new patterns. Apart from their direct efect, new parties may also have indirect efect on patterns of socio-economic background voting. “Even without making electoral inroads, newly formed parties are relevant, as existing parties may react to their emergence and their policy oferings” (Zons 2015, p. 920). Such responses by established parties include non-issue-based reactions such as establishing a cordon sanitaire around a new rival (van Spanje and Brug 2009; van Spanje 2010a). More importantly for the present study, such responses by established parties may also encompass issue- based reactions such as dismissive, adversarial, and accommodative tactics (Meguid 2008). Accommodative tactics in response to, for instance, anti-immigration parties means co-opting of its immigration policy issue position, which has been shown to be related to anti-immigration party success at the polls (van Spanje 2010b; Han 2015; Abou-Chadi 2016).

New elderly parties

Successful prophetic parties and prolocutors, and reactions from established parties they trigger, may thus change electoral competition. More specifcally, they may change the basis on which voters decide to cast a vote for one party or another, or abstain. To the extent that these parties and their concerns are related to socio- economic background, this means that these parties can bring voters’ background back in. Elderly parties are clearly related to age, education, and income, basic socio-economic background factors that have had relatively little explanatory power in vote choice in contemporary Europe (e.g. van der Eijk and Franklin 1996; Van der Brug et al. 2007). Elderly parties are labelled “prolocutors”, as they cater to the interests of a particular social group without any claim to a broader ideology (Lucar- die 2000). The electoral potential of grey politics seems enormous. This is because a com- bination of two societal developments (Goerres 2009): frst, welfare state restructur- ing and demographic developments produce a potential confict of economic interest between generations. Second, the electorates of several Western democracies are greying, because of the ageing of the population in general but also because older voters tend to more frequently vote than younger voters. This has led to claims that “After 2016, Germany will be a gerontocracy” (Sinn and Übelmesser 2002, p.153) and that France would become a gerontocracy in 2014 and Italy as early as 2006 (Übelmesser 2004). Obviously, these two factors do not automatically translate into intergenerational tension—let alone into a new political divide. A heated debate is raging about to what extent such intergenerational tension actually exists. Some colleagues maintain that it is largely a “myth” (Goerres 2008), that the elderly are excluded from political infuence (Walker 1998; Davidson 2014), or that there is no sign of such grey dawn yet (Vincent et al. 2001; Tepe and Vanhuysse 2009; Binstock 2010; Börsch- Supan et al. 2011; Emery 2012). Others see evidence in support of intergenerational tension (Peterson 1999; Kotlikof and Leibfritz 1999; Streeck 2007), to some extent Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival… at least (Sinn and Übelmesser 2002), or even perceive it as a threat to democracy (Thurow 1996; Berry 2014). Again others have more nuanced answers, such as that “some countries… show a higher salience of the age cleavage across all policy felds” (Busemeyer et al. 2009, p.196), or that, rather than crowding out other con- ficts and replacing them (cf. Schattschneider 1960), such intergenerational tension seems more likely to complement existing divides (Kohli 2005). In any case, there seems to be some electoral potential—some window of opportunity for political entrepreneurs in some countries. This electoral potential has been capitalized on to a limited extent—although in some countries even considerably less than in others. Elderly parties have emerged in most Western countries (Hanley 2010). In Luxembourg, the ADR has consistently scored between 6 and 12% of the vote in general elections since 1989. In the Nether- lands, elderly parties were formed within a short time span, succeeding in flling an entire football stadium with dissatisfed seniors and receiving eight out of 150 seats in parliament in 1994. In Israel, Serbia, and Slovenia pensioners’ parties have even joined government coalitions; in Croatia, a grey interest party acted as a support party (Hanley 2010: 5). As such, these parties may well have partly reshaped electoral politics in their countries. However, in most countries they have remained tiny. In sum, new elderly parties may disrupt the cleavage structure, bringing socio- economic background factors back in. As Hooghe and Marks (forthcoming, p. 13) point out, cleavage theory suggests that “existing parties cannot radically shift their issue positions”, which opens up room for “the growth of challenging parties, par- ticularly in low barrier systems”. One such challenger party in one such low barrier system is the elderly party 50Plus in the Netherlands, in many ways the most successful Western elderly party today.

The new elderly party 50Plus

The founder of 50Plus, political veteran Jan Nagel, has been a political entrepre- neur for decades. A former Labour Senator, Nagel was involved in the formation of several new parties, including the party that chose political frebrand Pim Fortuyn as its leader in 2001. After the expulsion of Fortuyn from this party Nagel went on with new political projects. In 2009 he founded the Independent Elderly and Chil- dren’s Union (OOKU), a party that targeted voters over 50 years of age who worry about their pension and retirement age. In 2011, the party’s name was changed into 50Plus, the label under which it participated in the 2012 general elections. In that election the party received 1.9% of the vote, which translated into two out of 150 seats in the national parliament. An impressive accomplishment, as only about one in ten new parties has managed to clear the electoral threshold since 1948 (Krouwel and Lucardie 2008). In the following election, in 2017, 50Plus campaigned aggressively, accusing the national statistics agency CBS of telling lies on the orders of the government. The party obtained 3.1% of the vote, doubling its seat share. It had already received 3.7% of the vote in the 2014 European elections and 2.6% in regional elections one year later. These results are also impressive, as 2% had been the highest score for J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout any Western European pensioner’s party—except for the short-lived Dutch AOV in 1994 and the ADR in Luxembourg, which has developed into a broader conservative party. 50Plus, by contrast, combines its staunch defence of seniors’ economic interests with quite a progressive (albeit low-profle) platform on other matters such as same-sex marriage. This may be related to political leader Henk Krol being openly gay, and a self-declared proponent of gay rights.

Explaining the vote for new elderly party 50Plus

Does 50Plus’s electoral success bode well for a new divide in Western democratic politics? To address this question, we should investigate what drives the vote for the party. This study is guided by the research question of to what extent the 50Plus vote is structured by a new divide. In this section, we discuss the hypotheses that we test for this and discuss controls related to each of four alternative options as well. To what extent is 50Plus new politics avant la garde? The party rides a new wave, succeeding in mobilizing on a divide between less educated yet wealthy elderly, on the one hand, and higher educated yet poor youngsters, on the other.

H1a The older, the higher one’s propensity to vote for 50Plus.

H1b The lower educated, the higher one’s propensity to vote for 50Plus.

H1c The older and the lower educated, the higher one’s propensity to vote for 50Plus.

H1d The older and the lower one’s income, the higher one’s propensity to vote for 50Plus.

In this scenario, we expect the poor elderly to realize that the party is there to help them and to perceive the party to be ideologically close to them; similarly, we hypothesize that the poor youth recognize that a strong 50Plus may be fnancially costly for their generation and see the party as ideologically remote.

H2a The older and the poorer, the more one feels ideologically close to 50Plus.

H2b The younger and the poorer, the more one feels ideologically remote from 50Plus.

Rival explanations

Four types of rival explanations are tested. First, the vote for any party is commonly viewed in terms of the four cleavage types that Lipset and Rokkan (1967) distinguish. Following the owner versus worker cleavage type, we control for the Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival… possibility that one’s propensity to vote for 50Plus is afected by one’s income. In line with a second cleavage type, pitting church versus state, we control for the possibility that religiosity depresses the likelihood of voting 50Plus. This is because the state would be a safe haven for those who cannot fall back on the help of religious institutions. In line with the urban versus rural cleavage, we control for the possibility that if the voter lives in a large city, she is less inclined to support the party. In view of the fourth cleavage, that sees the centre take on the periphery, we control for the possibility that in more peripheral parts of the country, relatively more voters may feel left behind, being more drawn to the party. Second, normal politics would entail economic issue voting. Traditional issues include economic issues such as to what extent the economy should be regulated, social benefts should be provided, and taxes should be levied. 50Plus aims to have the government redistribute income to an economically mainly inactive group in society, and to increase the fows of resources directed to care for the elderly, pensions and health care. Thus, we control for the possibility that a voter is left-wing on economic policy issues. Third, new issues (Inglehart 1979) include life style considerations (such as same-sex marriage, women’s emancipation, euthanasia, and abortion) as well as environmental and human rights concerns (e.g. attitude towards torture). Given that 50Plus is new, has a progressive profle and a famboyant homo- sexual leader, the party may attract votes based on new issues. Fourth—justifed or not, the vote for new parties is often understood, or framed, in terms of “protest voting” (cf. Van der Brug et al. 2000). Politically cynical voters, so the argument goes, are dissatisfed with the government and are not trusting the institutions, which leads to a vote for a party that is not part of the “elite”. On this view, the vote for a new party is a vote against the “old” parties. We control for the possibility that the politically cynical and dissatisfed with little trust tend to support 50Plus.

Methods

To test our hypotheses, we use survey data collected in the 2014 European Elections Campaign Study (van Praag and De Vreese 2017). This was a four-wave panel, with the frst wave in December 2013, the second in March 2014, the third in April 2014 and the fourth in May 2014. Our variables of interest were measured in the frst wave with the exception of income, asked about in the second wave. We thus limit the data description to the frst two waves. Fieldwork was performed by TNS-NIPO (today known as Kantar Public), which maintains a panel of 200,000 adults recruited through multiple strategies (e.g. tel- ephone, face-to-face, and online). Membership in the panel is by invitation only to ensure sample quality and representativeness. For this study, a random sample was drawn from the database, with quotas set on age, gender, and education. The survey was done using Computer Assisted Web Interviewing (CAWI). A total of 2189 respondents participated in wave 1 (AAPOR RR1 78.1%), and 1819 in wave 2 (re- contact rate 83.1%). A few variables in the survey had missing data, among which J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout the two dependent variables (propensity to vote for 50Plus and perceived ideology of 50Plus) and several independent variables (especially income and ideology). We imputed missing data of the independent variables (not of the dependent variables). This led to a sample size of N = 2038 (propensity to vote as dependent variable), and N = 1520 (perceived ideology as dependent variable), respectively.1

Operationalization

Dependent variables

Our main dependent variable, a voter’s propensity to vote for 50Plus, is measured with the following question: “We have a number of parties in the Netherlands, each of which would like to get your vote. How probable it is that you will ever vote for the following parties? Please specify your views on a scale ranging from 1 to 10, where 1 means “not at all probable” and 10 means “Very probable”. This question is asked in random order for all 11 parties represented in the national parliament, among which 50Plus.2 Our second dependent variable is the perceived ideology of 50Plus. This was measured by asking where respondents placed a list of parties on a scale where 0 means “left” and 10 means “right”. Again, the parties the respondents were asked about were the 11 parliamentary parties. Again, the parties were presented to respondents in random order.

Independent variables

Three factors capture the idea of a new divide, reviving the key role of socio-economic background characteristics: age, education, and income. Age is measured in years, and education in terms of the highest level of education completed. In a frst step, age and education are added to the analysis. In a second step, interaction variables of age with education and of age with income are included in the analysis. We measured income by using the item: “All-in-all, at about what level is the living standard of your family?” Answers were given on a 1–7 scale, where 1 means “poor family” and 7 means “rich family”.3

1 We also ran our models using list-wise deletion, reducing our sample size to just N = 1438. See “Appendix” Table 3 for the results. 2 Although the statistics for our PTV measures show acceptable values in terms of normal distributions (skew = 1.11, kurtosis = 0.02), we do observe that about half of our respondents (N = 1020) give the lowest possible score, indicating they will never vote for 50Plus (see “Appendix” Fig. 4 for a visual representation of the distribution). We believe, however, this is not problematic for our analyses, because we observe that the higher scores are present in sufcient numbers and always within three times the standard deviation distance from the mean. This indicates that higher values should not be considered outli- ers. Also, we observe that the residuals in the regression analyses are normally distributed (for Model 1: skew = 0.84, kurtosis = 0.01; for Model 2: skew = 0.83, kurtosis = 0.05), meeting the assumptions required for regression analysis. 3 In addition to this subjective income measure we also examined objective income. Objective income was gauged with the following formulation: “We would also like to ask you about the monthly net income of your household (all members aged 18 and above), including all pensions and social benefts like child allowances and any other income such as rents.” There were twelve answering options, rang- Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival…

Control variables

The infuence of the capital versus labour cleavage is tapped with the variable income, mentioned above. To capture the power of the church versus state cleavage, we measured religiosity. This was gauged by asking: “Regardless of whether or not you belong to a particular religion, how religious would you say you are?” Answers were given on a scale from 0 (“not at all religious”) to 6 (“Very religious”). The urban versus rural cleavage may afect party choice through place of residence. A dichotomous variable was added on the basis of the municipality the respondent resides in, coding living in a city of more than 500,000 inhabitants ‘1’ and living in a less urbanized environment ‘0’. Three cities in the Netherlands have more than half a million inhabitants: Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. About 1 in 10 respondents live in one of these three cities. Place of residence was also important with regard to the centre versus periphery cleavage. In the Netherlands, the wealthy, well-organized, and politically powerful centre is currently called ‘Randstad’. Similarly, residence in a Randstad municipality (centre) is coded ‘1’ and residence in the any of the other municipalities (periphery) is coded ‘0’. The proportion of respondents who live in the centre is 44%. Ideology (left–right) was measured by posing the question “In political matters, people talk about ‘the left’ and ‘the right’. What is your position? Please indicate your views using any number on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means ‘left’ and 10 means ‘right’. Which number best describes your position?” Furthermore, respondents were asked to what extent, on a seven-point scale ranging from 0 (“Strongly disagree”) to 6 (“Strongly agree”), they agree or disagree with the following statements: “Politics should abstain from intervening in the economy”, “Providing a sta- ble network of social security should be a prime goal of government”, and “The government should cut down on public services so that they can lower taxes”. In the same fashion, respondents were asked about the statements: “Same-sex marriages should be prohibited by law”, “Women should be given preferential treat- ment when applying for jobs and promotions”, “Women should be free to decide on matters of abortion”, “Stronger measures should be taken to protect the environment”, and “Torturing a prisoner is never justifed, even if it might prevent a terror- ist attack”. Concerning a-political protest, we measured three concepts, political cynicism, government satisfaction, and institutional trust. Political cynicism was measured by tapping the degree to which respondents agree or disagree, on a 0 (“Strongly disagree”) to 6 (“Strongly agree”) scale, with four statements: “Nearly all politicians

Footnote 3 (continued) ing from “less than 150 euros” to “more than 10,000 euros”. As both measures were obviously quite highly correlated (r = .56) we felt forced to choose between them. The objective income variable had many missing values. Thus, we show the results using subjective income only. Note that the objective income variable did not result in any statistically signifcant fndings whatsoever. J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout would betray their ideals or break their promises when this increases their power”, “Most politicians are in politics for personal gain”, “Most politicians are honest to their voters”, and “Most politicians are dedicated to their work and we should be thankful for the work they do”. The answers to these items led to a single, reliable scale (Eigen value = 2.39; Cronbach’s alpha = .77). Government satisfaction was gauged by using fve items, a general one (“The current national government is doing a good job”) and four specifc ones “And how well do you think the government is handling the issue of European integration, the economy, the environment, and immigration”. Opinions about these statements on a 0–6 scale (“completely disagree” to “completely agree”, and “very poorly” to “very well”, respectively), formed a single, reliable scale (Eigen value = 3.25; Cronbach’s alpha = .86). For institutional trust, the following question was used: “How much trust do you have in the following institutions? Please use a scale ranging from 1 to 7, on which 1 means that you have no trust at all and 7 means that you have a great deal of trust”. Nine institutions were asked about (the lower chamber of the Dutch parliament, Dutch government, European Parliament, European Commission, media, judiciary, fnan- cial sector, medical sector, and science), resulting in a single, reliable scale (Eigen value = 4.65; Cronbach’s alpha = .89). See Table 1 for descriptive statistics of the variables included in our analyses. We run several models. First we regress respondents’ propensity to vote for 50Plus on all our predictors simultaneously, which allows us to focus on the main efects predicted in H1a–b. As some of the predictors are likely to be correlated, having one model is advantageous because it allows us to control for spurious rela- tions. The correlations are not too strong that it would lead to multicollinearity (i.e. the lowest tolerance value is .49).4 In order to assess H1c and H1d, we add to the previous regression model interactions between age and education, and between age and income. Finally, to test H2a and H2b, we regress the perceived ideological position of 50Plus on age, income, and ideological position, including a three-way interaction between the three predictors.

Results

We frst turn to our hypotheses about electoral support for 50Plus. H1a predicts that older individuals have a higher propensity to vote 50Plus. The results shown in Model 1 of Table 2 support this hypothesis (b = 0.05, SE = 3.26 × 10−3, b* = 0.31, p < .001). The size of the coefcient implies that for each year someone is older, the expected PTV score increases with 0.05. A diference of one standard deviation results in a diference of 0.79 in the PTV score. Compared with a 25-year-old voter, a 65-year-old voter has a 1.81 higher expected score on

4 Although multicollinearity is not too high, for theoretical reasons we reran the models based on only issue voting (excluding ideological predispositions), and based on only ideological voting (excluding economic policy issue positions), in turn. We show the results in “Appendix” Table 4. These results do not change our conclusions. Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival… .78 .86 .88 Alpha 2.11 2.55 2.82 1.18 2.29 1.87 1.59 0.30 1.32 0.50 1.73 1.66 1.60 1.65 1.51 2.03 1.17 1.07 0.97 17.43 SD 5.97 3.00 6.32 4.51 5.23 1.96 2.29 0.10 4.55 0.45 3.13 5.11 1.71 4.79 3.69 3.97 3.69 2.25 2.84 50.06 List-wise deletion List-wise M .77 .86 .89 Alpha 2.12 2.55 1.98 1.63 2.16 1.90 1.60 0.30 1.32 0.50 1.72 1.72 1.62 1.72 1.50 2.03 1.16 1.07 0.98 17.34 SD 5.76 2.95 5.27 7.27 5.24 1.92 2.41 0.10 4.53 0.44 3.15 5.05 1.76 4.72 3.70 3.84 3.75 2.17 2.75 49.28 Imputed dataImputed M .77 .86 .89 Alpha 2.12 2.55 1.98 1.79 2.29 1.90 1.60 0.30 1.32 0.50 1.72 1.72 1.62 1.72 1.50 2.03 1.16 1.07 0.98 17.34 SD 5.76 2.95 5.27 7.32 5.25 1.92 2.41 0.10 4.53 0.44 3.15 5.05 1.76 4.72 3.70 3.84 3.75 2.17 2.75 49.28 Original data M d 9 10 10 12 10 Max 6 6 1 6 1 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 5.6 6 94 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 18 Min a 1520. As this variable is used as a dependent variable, we did not impute missing values impute did not 1520. As this we is used as a dependent variable, variable = c Descriptive statistics Descriptive b In original N = 1578 sample: is 92 the value maximum observed deletion, In list-wise In original N sample: In original N = 1779 sample:

Education Propensity to vote for 50Plus for vote to Propensity Perceived ideology 50Plus (left–right) Perceived Income Religiosity economy intervention Pro-political Large city (urban vs rural) city (urban vs Large securityPro-social Randstad (centre vs periphery) vs Randstad (centre servicesPro-cutting cut taxes to Ideology (left–right) marriagePro-same-sex Pro-afrmative action Pro-afrmative Pro-choice Pro-environmental restrictions Pro-environmental Torture never acceptable never Torture Political cynicism Political 1 Table a b c d Government satisfaction Government Institutional trustInstitutional Age J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout

Table 2 Predicting propensity to vote 50Plus Model 1 Model 2 b SE b* b SE b*

Intercept − 0.22 (0.58) − 2.74** (0.89) Income − 0.03 (0.05) − 0.01 0.35* (0.16) 0.15 Religiosity 0.04 (0.03) 0.03 0.04 (0.03) 0.03 Randstad (centre vs periphery) 0.01 (0.11) 0.00 0.00 (0.11) 0.00 Large city (urban vs rural) 0.01 (0.19) 0.00 0.03 (0.19) 0.00 Ideology (left–right) 0.04 (0.03) 0.03 0.04 (0.03) 0.04 Pro-political intervention economy 0.04 (0.04) 0.03 0.04 (0.04) 0.02 Pro-social security 0.08+ (0.04) 0.04 0.08+ (0.04) 0.04 Pro-cutting services to cut taxes − 0.05 (0.03) − 0.03 − 0.05 (0.03) − 0.03 Pro-same-sex marriage 0.04 (0.04) 0.03 0.04 (0.04) 0.03 Pro-afrmative action 0.14*** (0.03) 0.09 0.14*** (0.03) 0.09 Pro-choice 0.08* (0.04) 0.05 0.08* (0.04) 0.05 Pro-environmental restrictions − 0.02 (0.04) − 0.01 − 0.03 (0.04) − 0.01 Torture never acceptable − 0.06* (0.03) − 0.05 − 0.06* (0.03) − 0.05 Political cynicism 0.14* (0.06) 0.06 0.14* (0.06) 0.06 Government satisfaction − 0.03 (0.07) − 0.01 − 0.04 (0.07) − 0.02 Institutional trust 0.09 (0.08) 0.03 0.08 (0.08) 0.03 Age 0.05*** (0.00) 0.31 0.10*** (0.01) 0.65 Education − 0.12*** (0.03) − 0.10 0.03 (0.08) 0.02 Age * education − 0.00+ (0.00) − 0.29 Age * income − 0.01* (0.00) − 0.16 F 18.20*** 17.18*** R2 .140 .146 N 2038 2038

Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coefcients with standard errors in parentheses ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05, +p < .1 (two-tailed) the PTV scale, which runs from 1 to 10. Similarly, we fnd support for H1b, which states that the less educated would have higher propensity to vote scores (b = − 0.12, SE = 0.03, b* = 0.10, p < .001). This indicates, for instance, that voters who only fn- ished primary education are expected to score on average 0.87 higher on the PTV scale than voters who are academically educated. Not only do these signifcant coef- fcients support our hypotheses, we also fnd that age and education have the highest standardized coefcients of all predictors tested, including the controls, indicating that these are the strongest factors infuencing the propensity to vote for 50Plus. In a next step, we assess H1c and H1d, which predict that age moderates the efects of education and income, respectively. In Model 2 of Table 2, we add the interactions. We fnd that the moderating infuence of age on the education efect is marginally signifcant (b = − 2.92 × 10−3, SE = 1.51 × 10−3, p = .053). The negative sign implies that the higher the age, the more negative the efect of education. To ease the interpretation of this interaction, we plot the marginal efects of education Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival…

Fig. 1 Marginal efect of education on propensity to vote for 50Plus for diferent values of age (range 18–94). The dashed lines represent the 95% confdence interval on propensity to vote for diferent values of age in Fig. 1. The fgure shows that the education efect becomes signifcant from the age of 35 onwards. In addition, the marginal efect between the age of 19 (where the 95% confdence interval has the highest lower bound) and the age of 77 (where the 95% confdence interval has the lowest upper bound) difer signifcantly (bdif = 0.17, SE = 0.07, p = .021). This indicates that the efect of education on propensity to vote for 50Plus difers across values of age. For instance, among individuals of age 65, the model predicts a diference between academically educated and those with only primary education of 1.13, while this is 1.54 among individuals of age 85 and only 0.32 (and not signifcant) among individuals of age 25. These fndings support H1c. We test the moderating infuence of age on the income efect on propensity to vote for 50Plus by looking at the interaction of age with income. The interaction efect is signifcant (b = − 7.51 × 10−3, SE = 2.97 × 10−3, p = .011), the direction of the interaction being as theoretically expected. To ease the interpretation, we plot the interaction in Fig. 2. This shows clearly that after the retirement age the marginal efect of income is negative, indicating that poor pensionados are more likely to vote for 50Plus, with a marginal expected diference in PTV score between the wealthiest and poorest groups of 0.84 among people of age 65, and a diference of 1.74 among people of age 85. This supports H1d. From a pocket-book voting point of view this very much supports the idea of a revival of socio-economic background politics. Voters who feel poor will likely vote for 50Plus, but only when they are old—i.e. only when a vote for the party is in their narrow economic self-interest. In a fnal step, we turn to our hypotheses regarding the perceived ideological closeness of 50Plus to the respondents. We hypothesized that elderly voters who consider themselves poor feel ideologically close to 50Plus (H2a) while young voters who consider themselves poor feel ideologically distant to that party (H2b). We model this by regressing perceived ideology of 50Plus on age, income and ideology of the respondent, including a three-way interaction. The signifcant three-way interaction (b = − 2.56 × 10−3, SE = 1.24 × 10−3, p = .040) implies that the strength of the J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout

Fig. 2 Marginal efect of income on propensity to vote for 50Plus for diferent values of age (range 18–94). The dashed lines represent the 95% confdence interval

Fig. 3 Marginal efect of respondents’ ideological position on perceived ideological position of 50Plus for diferent values of age and income. The left panel shows the marginal efects across the range of age (18–94, on the horizontal axis) for the mean minus 2 SD of income (the black line) and the mean plus 2 SD (the grey line), with the dashed lined representing the 95% confdence intervals. The right panel shows the marginal efect across diferent values of age (on the horizontal axis) with the diferent lines representing diferent values of income. Darker lines represent lower values of subjective income (range 1–7) relation between respondents’ ideology and perceived ideology of 50Plus depends on age and income. To further investigate what this interaction exactly means, we plot the marginal efect of respondents’ ideology on perceived ideology of 50Plus in Fig. 3. Both panels of Fig. 3 illustrate the same marginal efects, but with difering levels of detail: the left panel shows only the marginal efect for two values of income and includes the 95% confdence intervals; the right panel shows the marginal efects for the entire range of income (and ignores the confdence intervals, for clarity of presen- tation). What both panels illustrate is that among voters who consider themselves poor (the black lines), we fnd the steepest slope of the marginal efects of respondents’ ideology on perceived ideology of 50Plus. In turn this shows that among respondents Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival… who are both poorer and older we fnd a positive relationship between ideology of the respondent and perceived ideology of 50Plus. In the left panel, we observe for instance that the oldest respondents (age 94) who are two standard deviations below the mean of income have a marginal efect of 0.45 (with a 95% confdence interval between 0.17 and 0.73) of respondents’ own ideological position on their perceived ideological position of 50Plus. In the right panel, we observe that among the poorest and oldest respondents the marginal efect is 0.59. This implies that for these individuals their own ideology and the perceived ideology of 50Plus align. Vice versa, we fnd a negative relationship among poorer and younger individuals. For instance, in the left panel among 18-year-old individuals who perceive their income two standard deviations below the mean have a marginal efect of their own ideological position on the perceived ideology of 50Plus of − 0.38 (with a 95% confdence interval between − 0.59 and − 0.17). And the right panel shows that among 18-year-old individuals who perceive themselves poorest, the marginal efect is estimated at − 0.47. This indicates that among this group, the ideology of the respondent and the perceived ideology of 50Plus diverge. These fndings support H2a and H2b, respectively. Interestingly, the (lighter) grey lines in both panels which represent individuals who perceive themselves rather wealthy are almost horizontal, which indicates that among the wealthy the marginal efect does not depend on age. Given that the confdence interval always includes zero for this group, it indicates that among the wealthy, independent of age, there is neither convergence nor divergence of respondents’ ideology and perceived ideology of 50Plus. In other words, we only observe convergence among individuals who are poorer and older and we only observe divergence among individuals who are poorer and younger. On a fnal note, we mention that the controls do not yield strong indications of rival explanations for the 50Plus vote. The results suggest that traditional cleavages and traditional issues are not very important in understanding a vote for 50Plus, as we fnd a marginally signifcant coefcient only for respondents’ position on social security. In terms of new issues, 50Plus succeeds in mobilizing on just two out of fve (afrmative action and abortion). The notion of a-political protest appears to play a modest role in voting for the elderly party, as political cynicism has an efect whereas government satisfaction and institutional trust do not.

Conclusion

The decline of religion and class voting has often been touted. Such development, however, may not be irreversibly going in one direction. In fact, in some times and places, socio-economic background voting may become more important. To some extent, this seems to be the case in the Netherlands, where a political party has entered the political scene that defes the logic of contemporary electoral politics, mobilizing on (most importantly) age, education, income, and combinations of these three factors. This party, 50Plus, does not mobilize many voters on the basis of longstanding cleavages, traditional economic issues, or new policy issues. Its appeal does not crucially hinge on a-political protest either. Instead, 50Plus succeeds in rallying voters around J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout really basic socio-economic background characteristics. Age comes together with education and income to form the platform that the party successfully mobilizes on. Voters who are older, less educated, and poorer tend to vote for 50Plus at high rates, almost regardless of their ideological predispositions, policy issue preferences, or political dis- satisfaction. We fnd that, controlling for a wide variety of other factors, the less educated elderly disproportionally vote for the party, as well as the poorer elderly. Indeed, the party polarizes to such extent that it alienates younger poorer voters in the process, just as one would expect when studying a new divide in society. Or, at least, poorer youngsters feel ideologically distant from 50Plus, while poorer elderly feel ideologically close. Quite some uncertainty surrounds our fndings, due to this study’s limitations. The fndings reported are of course derived from only one study of one country at one point in time. Parties for the elderly and their electoral appeal may vary across countries and across election campaigns. Furthermore, it is a relatively new party. It is akin to a tabula rasa, the ideological and policy positions of which are unknown among substantial parts of the electorate. In addition, the party may develop, as it tries to widen its electoral appeal and more political candidates become associated with the party. As a consequence, how this will develop over time remains open to question. What if voters get to know the party and its candidates better? The implications of these fndings are not limited to intergenerational tension, or the role of socio-economic background factors, both of which may increase in sync with the rise of elderly parties—and with the antithesis of the rise of parties that cater to the interests of the young. Another set of implications concerns the rise of pocket-book voting that the fndings suggest. Voting out of narrow self-interest—after all, the vote for elderly parties seems to be inspired by narrower self-interest than the vote for, say, green or left-libertarian parties—may change democratic representation and democratic accountability. It may change democratic representation because narrow economic interests will be represented at the expense of representation of ideological outlooks. It may change democratic accountability because when representing a narrow economic self-interested elderly vote, the incentive to make responsible long-term policies, and being held accountable for them, may weaken. More research is needed to further our understanding of consequences of the rise of elderly parties for democratic societies. The parties for the elderly certainly merit more investigation. These parties have sprung up in almost all Western democracies. Although most have remained small, they seem to have quite some electoral potential to build from. Efective established party responses to their emergence are likely to limit their potential. Yet, given their growth potential and weak ideological ties, some may at times become pivotal forces that become kingmakers by tipping the balance between countries’ left and the right bloc. In the Netherlands, 50Plus has already become close to such pivotal position in recent years, despite its modest size. Future research should investigate to what extent, and how these parties fail or succeed in mobilizing the enormous potential of the greying electorates of the Western world.

Appendix

See Fig. 4 and Tables 3 and 4. Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival…

Fig. 4 Distribution of the propensity to vote 50Plus

Table 3 Predicting propensity to vote for 50Plus using list-wise deletion Model 1 Model 2 b SE b* b SE b*

Intercept 0.20 (0.71) − 2.23* (1.10) Income − 0.02 (0.06) − 0.01 0.36* (0.18) 0.16 Religiosity 0.05 (0.04) 0.03 0.05 (0.04) 0.03 Randstad (centre vs periphery) − 0.02 (0.14) 0.00 − 0.02 (0.14) 0.00 Large city (urban vs rural) − 0.16 (0.23) − 0.02 − 0.13 (0.23) − 0.01 Ideology (left–right) 0.03 (0.03) 0.03 0.04 (0.03) 0.03 Pro-political intervention economy 0.09* (0.04) 0.06 0.09* (0.04) 0.05 Pro-social security 0.11* (0.05) 0.06 0.12* (0.05) 0.06 Pro-cutting services to cut taxes − 0.07+ (0.04) − 0.05 − 0.07+ (0.04) − 0.05 Pro-same-sex marriage 0.04 (0.04) 0.03 0.04 (0.04) 0.03 Pro-afrmative action 0.18*** (0.04) 0.12 0.19*** (0.04) 0.12 Pro-choice 0.04 (0.04) 0.03 0.04 (0.04) 0.03 Pro-environmental restrictions − 0.02 (0.05) − 0.01 − 0.02 (0.05) − 0.01 Torture never acceptable − 0.05 (0.03) − 0.04 − 0.05 (0.03) − 0.04 Political cynicism 0.14+ (0.07) 0.06 0.14+ (0.07) 0.06 Government satisfaction − 0.04 (0.08) − 0.02 − 0.05 (0.08) − 0.02 Institutional trust 0.11 (0.09) 0.04 0.10 (0.09) 0.04 Age 0.04*** (0.00) 0.26 0.09*** (0.02) 0.59 Education − 0.16*** (0.03) − 0.13 − 0.03 (0.10) − 0.03 Age * education − 0.00 (0.00) − 0.30 Age * income − 0.01* (0.00) − 0.13 F 12.62*** 11.83*** 2 R .138 .143 N 1438 1438

Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coefcients with standard errors in parentheses ***p < .001; **p < .01; *p < .05; +p < .1 (two-tailed) J. H. P. van Spanje, R. Azrout 0.15 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.02 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.64 0.09 0.02 0.05 − 0.16 − 0.28 − 0.05 − 0.01 − 0.02 − 0.02 b* (0.87) (0.16) SE (0.03) (0.00) (0.00) (0.11) (0.03) (0.19) (0.06) (0.04) (0.07) (0.04) (0.03) (0.08) (0.04) (0.01) (0.03) (0.08) (0.04) (0.04) + − 2.48** 0.35* b 0.04 − 0.00 Model 4 17.95*** − 0.01* .145 2038 0.01 − 0.06* 0.03 0.15* 0.04 − 0.03 0.07 − 0.04 0.08 0.03 0.09*** 0.14*** 0.03 0.08* − 0.03 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.03 0.04 0.03 0.02 0.31 0.08 0.05 − 0.01 − 0.05 − 0.01 − 0.02 − 0.10 − 0.02 b* (0.56) (0.05) SE (0.03) (0.11) (0.03) (0.19) (0.06) (0.04) (0.07) (0.04) (0.03) (0.08) (0.04) (0.00) (0.03) (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) − 0.03 − 0.01 b 0.04 Model 3 0.01 − 0.07* 19.15*** .139 2038 0.01 0.15* 0.04 − 0.02 0.07 − 0.04 0.08 0.04 0.05*** 0.13*** − 0.13*** 0.08* − 0.03 0.15 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.02 0.03 0.02 0.65 0.09 0.02 0.06 − 0.29 − 0.04 − 0.16 − 0.02 − 0.01 b* (0.16) (0.87) (0.03) SE (0) (0.11) (0.03) (0) (0.19) (0.06) (0.03) (0.07) (0.08) (0.04) (0.01) (0.03) (0.08) (0.04) (0.04) + + 0.34* − 2.39** 0.04 b Model 2 0.00 19.84*** − 0.01* .143 2038 0.02 0.15* 0.03 − 0.06 0.08 0.03 0.10*** 0.14*** 0.02 − 0.00 0.09* − 0.01 − 0.05 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.02 0.03 0.02 0.31 0.09 0.06 − 0.02 − 0.02 − 0.11 − 0.01 − 0.04 b* (0.05) (0.03) (0.54) (0.11) SE (0.19) (0.06) (0.03) (0.07) (0.08) (0.04) (0.00) (0.03) (0.03) (0.04) (0.04) (0.03) − 0.04 0.04 0.12 0.01 b Model 1 21.44*** .137 2038 − 0.00 0.15* 0.03 − 0.05 0.09 0.04 0.05*** 0.14*** − 0.13*** 0.09* − 0.01 − 0.06* p < .1 (two-tailed) + Predicting propensity to vote 50Plus with separate models for ideology (left–right) 50Plus with economic positions and traditional models for separate vote to propensity Predicting Income Religiosity Intercept Randstad (centre vs periphery) vs Randstad (centre 4 Table Entries unstandardized OLS are regression coefcients with errors standard in parentheses *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05, F subjective * subjective Age income R2 N Large city (urban vs rural) city (urban vs Large Political cynicism Political Ideology (left–right) Government satisfaction Government Pro-political intervention economy intervention Pro-political Pro-social securityPro-social Institutional trustInstitutional Pro-cutting servicesPro-cutting cut taxes to Pro-same-sex marriagePro-same-sex Age Pro-afrmative action Pro-afrmative Education Pro-choice * education Age Pro-environmental restrictions Pro-environmental Torture never acceptable never Torture Bringing background back in: A Dutch new party and the revival…

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J. H. P. van Spanje is an associate professor of political communication & journalism at the University of Amsterdam. He previously conducted research at the University of Oxford, EUI, and NYU. Since 2015 he has given invited talks at Oxford, Colorado, Exeter, Montreal, and Stanford. In recent years Joost has won the Annual Political Science Award, and grants adding up to 1.3 million euros of personal research funding. In addition, his students nominated him for the 2017 Lecturer of the Year Award. The research team led by Joost investigates legal action against anti-immigration parties in 21 European countries since 1965, and its efects on citizens. Joost currently also studies how news media in mature democracies cover new parties and how this afects voting behavior. He has published 29 ISI-ranked journal articles as well as the monograph “Controlling the Electoral Marketplace” about efects of established party strategies on other parties’ electoral support in 15 countries since 1944.

R. Azrout is a researcher and lecturer of Political Communication in the Department of Communication Science, University of Amsterdam. He wrote his PhD dissertation on how EU citizens form opinions towards enlargement of the European Union and the role of the media in this process. After obtaining his PhD, he continued working on the topic of citizens’ attitudes towards the European Union, but expanded his focus to include issues concerning immigration and minorities, electoral behaviour, political parties and polarization. He combines these more political science topics with communication science by also focussing on how individual exposure to specifc media content infuences the opinion formation process.