Do Religious Voters Support Populist Radical Right Parties? Opposite Effects in Western and East Central Europe

The rise of populist radical right parties fuel a discussion about the roots of their success. Existing research has demonstrated the relevance of e.g. gender, education and income for explaining the far-right vote. The present study contributes to the aforementioned debate by focusing on the role of religiosity. The data collected in the 8th round of the European Social Survey (2016) make it possible to examine in more detail the political relevance of attendance at religious services and other measures of religious devotion. This study focuses in particular on fourteen countries, ten from Western Europe and four from Central and Eastern Europe. In none of Western European countries one may find a positive relationship between religiosity and vote for a populist radical right party. On the contrary, in many countries of this region more religious voters are substantively less inclined to support far-right movements. The situation is different in parts of Central and Eastern Europe. In Poland, Hungary and to a weaker extend also in Estonia, the probability of a vote for right-wing populists increases with religiosity.