Shades of Red: Party Competition for Progressive Voters Between the Radical and the Moderate Left

Social democratic parties have been suffering an electoral crisis since long. By contrast in many European countries the radical left has experienced a recent resurgence reaching historical heights in countries such as Greece or Spain where they have been able to enter the government after the Great Recession. Both party families are experiencing a reconfiguration of their social electoral coalitions in a context in which some of their traditional electoral strongholds among the working class are being attracted by right-wing and radical right-wing options. In any case, social democratic and radical-left parties compete for common pools of voters among the new middle classes and among the working class. This paper will examine this competition within the European left focusing both on a detailed range of social structure characteristics and political attitudes of voters. Moreover, it will also assess whether the social bases of the support for left parties differs substantially between first and second order elections.