Eco-social welfare states and party choice in Europe: Support for climate and welfare policies and their associations with voting patterns

Emerging literature on eco-social welfare states suggests that synergies exist between welfare and climate policy goals. In public attitudes, such synergies show up as ‘dual support’ for both welfare and climate policies, and they are argued to assist in the transformation to an ecologically sustainable welfare state. Empirical results suggest that such dual support is at its height in Nordic countries. However, it is not known whether such eco-social attitudinal patterns are associated with voting and party choice, making it unclear how much these attitudes have political importance. In this article, I combine insights from the eco-social welfare state literature with literature on vote choice and party families in Europe. My research questions are: 1) Do eco-social preferences affect vote choice, 2) Are there cross-national differences in how these preferences affect vote choice, and 3) Which party families do such effects or differences involve? I use the European Social Survey (2016) data from 23 countries to examine how support for welfare and climate policies are associated with voting for the main European party families. I model welfare preferences with two measures: deservingness of welfare target groups and attitudes towards the state as a provider of welfare. Climate preferences are measured with an index of climate policy attitudes. The data is analyzed using multinomial regression methods. My preliminary results suggest that both welfare and climate stances are associated with vote choice. In general, climate policies seem to have similar associations with voting patterns as deservingness-related welfare opinions, whereas opinions on the role of state as provider of welfare are less connected with climate stances. The results highlight both similarities and large cross-national differences in how the two policy preferences are associated with voting. Overall, welfare and climate policy stances show strongest associations with vote choice in the Nordic countries, whereas the associations are smallest in Eastern Europe. The full analyses will compare how eco-social preferences affect voting for various party families. Theoretically, the results will indicate whether eco-social welfare states are in electoral demand, and point out electoral avenues on how such policies might materialize. The results also suggest how eco-social preferences may shape European party politics in the future. For welfare state scholars, the results indicate how climate-related opinions may shape traditional partisan support for welfare state policies.