Personality and Voting for a Right-Wing Populist Party - Evidence from Switzerland

Ackermann, Kathrin; Zampieri, Eros; Freitag, Markus (2018). Personality and Voting for a Right-Wing Populist Party - Evidence from Switzerland. Swiss political science review, 24(4), pp. 545-564. Wiley 10.1111/spsr.12330

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Many established democracies are currently challenged by populist parties and movements. Switzerland is a particularly interesting case because it has an established right‐wing populist party that is part of the governmental coalition on a regular basis: the Swiss People's Party (SVP). We study the electoral success of the SVP from a psychological perspective and argue that dispositions captured by the Big Five personality traits are related to voting for the SVP. Analyzing data from the Swiss Electoral Study (Selects) 2015, we find support for a negative relationship between openness to experience and agreeableness and voting for the SVP as well as a positive relationship between conscientiousness and extraversion and voting for this right‐wing populist party. Additional analyses indicate that attitudes toward immigration mediate these relationships to some degree. Agreeableness and conscientiousness are, however, still systematically related to voting for the SVP when attitudinal factors are controlled for.

Item Type:

Journal Article (Original Article)

Division/Institute:

03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Political Science

UniBE Contributor:

Ackermann, Kathrin Maria, Zampieri, Eros Massimo, Freitag, Markus

Subjects:

300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology > 320 Political science

ISSN:

1424-7755

Publisher:

Wiley

Language:

English

Submitter:

Alina Zumbrunn

Date Deposited:

25 Jun 2019 07:33

Last Modified:

05 Dec 2022 15:27

Publisher DOI:

10.1111/spsr.12330

BORIS DOI:

10.7892/boris.128690

URI:

https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/128690

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