Class Voting and Value Orientations

Sociodemographic variables and values are often seen as the first two steps in the “funnel of causality” in explanations of vote choice. Moving away from the focus on decline or stability in class voting, this paper is about one of the mechanisms through which class has its effect on voting: Value orientations. Using logistic regression, I show how five fundamental value orientations in Western politics account for about one fifth of total class voting. The paper also demonstrates that the different value orientations account for different amounts of class voting for each party family. This implies that there is much to gain from using a fourth generation dependent variable in class voting studies, measuring vote choice at a nuanced party family level rather than simply as “left” versus “non-left”. By empirically establishing one of the relevant mechanisms, the paper also facilitates explanations of the decline of class voting over time.