4.3.1 Data

The questions guiding this chapter pose quite high demands in terms of the data required to address them. To be able to assign individuals to their own and their parental social class, we need detailed information on their employment status and occupation, as well as their parents’ occupation when respondents were young. Therefore, we rely on data from ESS, merged with ESS-DEVO data (Ganzeboom Reference Ganzeboom2013) that provides a recoding of the answers to the open-ended question asking about parental occupation into four-digit ISCO codes. This is only available for ESS rounds 1–5, hence restricting our analyses to the period 2002–10. Our analytic sample consists of respondents aged 18 and over (eligible to vote) with information on their current occupation and parental occupation when respondents were young. We restrict the analysis to respondents from West European countries (nineteen in total), because occupational transformations and the structure of party competition differs for post-communist democracies. These countries are grouped into Northwestern Europe, Southern Europe, and Anglo-Saxon countries. In a second step of the analyses, when we zoom in on whether current patterns of class voting may be generating new ‘realigned legacies’ of left-wing support among the offspring of SCP, we restrict the analyses to the Northwestern European sample. Scandinavian and Continental European countries display stronger patterns of electoral realignment and, hence, represent a better sample to address the future of intergenerational transmission of left-wing support. In spite of this focus, additional analyses on all countries indicate that the trends here identified are largely consistent across Western Europe.

4.3.2 Variables and Operationalization

Our dependent variable captures whether the respondent voted for one of the following party families in the last national election: social democratic, green and left-libertarian, radical left, moderate right, and radical right, or other party families (including regionalist, agrarian and religious parties). For the recoding of party choice into these party families, we rely on the classification provided by the Chapel Hill Expert Survey. To characterize the full choice set, we also include a category for abstention, for respondents who indicate not having voted in the last national election. This means that our dependent variable for party choice is categorical, with seven non-ordered response categories. To facilitate interpretation, we restrict the presentation of the results to those outcome categories that are meaningful in the respective analyses (i.e. we frequently exclude abstention and ‘other parties’), but all categories are included in the model estimations.

The main independent variables are respondents’ class of origin and class of destination. Four-digit ISCO codes of occupations are used to classify occupations in different social classes. To minimize the number of observations without an assigned social class, we code class of the respondent based on their occupation and, when this is missing or the respondent is not in employment (as their main activity) we rely on partner’s class location, when the respondent is cohabiting with them. To code parental class, we rely on father’s occupation when the respondent was fourteen years old. If this information is missing (because the father was absent, not working, or because there is no information on his occupation), we rely on mother’s occupation. For the operationalization of social class, we use a simplified version of the Oesch eight-class scheme (Oesch Reference Oesch2006) – presented in Table 4.1, where the shaded cells indicate the six (aggregated) class categories used in the analyses.

We combine some of the classes into fewer categories because our main interest is in the class constituencies of the Left: the production and service workers – aggregated into ‘workers’ – and the SCPs. The old middle class (OMC) is operationalized by aggregating managers, self-employed professionals and large business owners and serves as a point of comparison in the analysis, as it represents a typical moderate right-wing constituency. Technical professionals (TCP) are kept separately as some research indicates that they are more left-leaning than the OMC (but less so than the SCP) (Kitschelt and Rehm Reference Kitschelt and Rehm2014). Office clerks (CLERKS) and small business owners (SBO) are kept as separate classes in the analyses without a specific partisan profile. The aggregation of certain classes simplifies the high number of potential intergenerational transitions between social classes, when we focus on different combinations of class of origin and destination, and their support for different party families. A respondent is socially mobile when their class of origin is different than their class of destination. To investigate our expectations regarding patterns of socialization and social mobility, specific combinations of class of origin and class of destination are used as categories of independent variables in the second set of analyses.

The analyses distinguish four generations of respondents: the silent generation (born 1928–45), baby boomers (1946–64), gen X (1965–80), and millennials (1981–96). While the silent generation and baby boomers have been socialized during periods of industrial alignments, the two younger generations have been socialized during post-industrialization periods. The median birth year in our sample is 1959 (mean: 1957); the 99th percentile is 1988. This means that most respondents are baby boomers, and that for the millennials, only relatively older respondents of that generation are included.

Control variables are included for gender, age, and marital status. To investigate whether part of the intergenerational transmission of left-wing support could act through a higher likelihood of being unionized, additional analyses (not shown) have been estimated that control for trade union membership of the respondents. The results remain unchanged with this additional control variable; so the figures here presented are based on the more parsimonious specification.

4.3.3 Analyses

Modelling the probability of voting for different parties or abstaining requires fitting a discrete choice model for non-ordered responses. Because not all respondents face the same choice set across the different countries under consideration (not all party families are represented in all countries), we implement a multinomial conditional logistic regression model that allows for varying individual alternative choice sets (Thurner Reference Thurner2000; Weber Reference Weber2011). To facilitate the interpretation of the results, and to avoid having to interpret log-odds relative to a reference category, we present the results from these analyses either as average predicted probabilities or as average marginal effects (AMEs) on probabilities. Standard errors are adjusted at the party-system (country) level to account for the different choice sets.

We estimate two sets of analyses. First, we analyse differences in party support by parental class of origin (and class of respondent, for comparison), using the OMC as a reference category. We further study differences in these patterns by estimating the model separately for the three geographical regions in Western Europe and four generations of respondents. These models are relatively restrictive because they include both class of origin and class of respondents in the same model, to estimate its impact net of each other. Second, we study how specific patterns of intergenerational social mobility (combinations of class of origin and class of destination) explain differences in party family support. We thereby focus specifically on transitions into the SCP and transitions out of the SCP (the latter for the two youngest generations of respondents only, because socialization in the SCP is less frequent among older generations). As mentioned earlier, this second set of analyses is restricted to North Western Europe, as the class–party realignment that this chapter builds on has started earlier there than in other regions within Western Europe.

4.4.1 Party Family Support by Class of Origin and Class of Destination

Before presenting differences in party family support by class of origin, we present descriptive analyses of the class composition of the electorate, as the regression models we present next do not account for the size of the relative classes. Figure 4.1 displays the class composition of the electorate of different party families, for class of origin, and class of destination, respectively. The results indicate substantive differences in the class composition of the electorate of different party families (as already documented extensively by existing research), but, more importantly, that this heterogeneity is also manifested by class of origin (parental class). Differences between the class composition by class of origin and class of destination display the trends of occupational upgrading and tertiarization of the post-industrial employment structure, as well as the realignment of social classes and parties.

Figure 4.1 Composition of electorates of party families by respondents and parental class

Source: Authors’ calculations using ESS 2002–2010.

First, focusing on the composition of the electorates by class of destination (offspring class), it shows that social democratic parties rely to a large extent (45%) on support from production and service workers. The middle-class electoral base of the Social Democrats is also substantial with one-third (35%, the total of SCP, TCP, and OMC), but the green and left-libertarian parties rely much more on middle-class support (total of 57%, vs. 24% from workers), especially from SCP (27%). This relatively large middle-class social democratic support is in line with the changes in the electorate of Social Democracy documented in earlier work (Gingrich and Häusermann Reference Gingrich and Häusermann2015) and discussed in the introduction of this volume. Compared to the other party families, the Social Democrats rely more on working-class support than moderate right parties, or radical left parties. However, we see an even greater weight of workers’ support among the radical right and abstention categories (close to, or over 50%).

Second, we ask to what extent the support base of the Social Democrats stems from voters with working-class backgrounds in the parental class. When we contrast the foregoing figures with the composition of the electorate by class of origin rather than class of destination, 52 per cent of social democratic party support stems from offspring from workers (mainly production workers). Compared to other categories, the proportion of the social democratic electorate coming from a working-class background is similar to that of abstention, and larger than the one of the Radical Right. Radical left and green and left-libertarian parties also rely on substantial support from offspring from workers (respectively, 46% and 33%), but less so than the Social Democrats. Especially the green and left-libertarian parties have a relatively larger support base from middle-class offspring than the Social Democrats (42% compared to 21%).

Taken together, one of the most important conclusions is that social democratic parties draw over-proportionally on support from the offspring of the working class. By comparison, in their electoral base by class of destination, the support base among workers is lower, and among the middle class is higher. By class of destination, workers form a larger part of the support base of the Radical Right (or abstention). These differences can be attributed to compositional effects: due to the transformations of the occupational structure, class sizes differ in the parental and offspring class, which account for the differences in the composition of the electorate by class of origin compared to class of destination. This is most clearly illustrated by the large fraction of offspring of workers across all parties, compared to that by class of destination.

Put simply: many contemporary middle-class voters have a working-class background, which explains differences in the class base of parties between the two analyses. Class–party realignments and intergenerational social mobility thus go together in explaining change in the class base of parties in general, but the Social Democrats in particular. For the Social Democrats, middle-class voters currently comprise one-third of their electorate. The fraction of the electorate with a middle-class background is only likely to increase in the future, as the offspring of these middle-class voters are more likely to hold middle-class than working-class positions. What does that mean for the support for the Social Democrats in the long run? Are they able to retain the support of middle-class voters without the ‘legacy’ of the working class? We will focus on this question in the multivariate analyses.

Next, we present results of our regression analyses predicting party family support by class of destination and class of origin, respectively net of each other, with added control variables. In Figure 4.2, AMEs of support (reference: OMC) for the five party families of interest are displayed for our categories of social class of origin and destination. First, focusing on class of destination (respondent’s class), the results indicate some patterns of class voting documented by earlier research, showing that social class is associated with support for different party families. However, not all classes differ in support for the five party families of interest. Regarding the social democratic party family, workers, SCP, and TCP show similarly higher support levels than the OMC. Concerning green and left-libertarian parties, the new middle classes – particularly the SCP – show higher levels of support, while the working classes show much lower support than the OMC. This is the exact opposite pattern of what we observe for the Radical Right: relatively higher support from workers and lower support from the SCP. Support for the Moderate Right also shows a clear class pattern: the highest support comes from the OMC, as all other class categories show lower support levels.

Figure 4.2 AMEs of respondents and parental class on support for party families (reference category: OMC)

Source: Authors’ calculations using ESS 2002–2010.

Second, when comparing support levels by class of destination with those by class of origin, some interesting differences and similarities in social democratic support become apparent, while support for other party families does not show many noticeable differences. Levels of social democratic support are quite similar across class of origin and destination when it comes to working-class voters and voters with working-class roots. However, social democratic support from offspring from SCP is not different from offspring from OMC, while the difference with working-class offspring is quite large. On the other hand, offspring of SCP and current SCP show similarly high support for green and left-libertarian parties. Offspring of SCP are also relatively more likely to support the Radical Left, a party family with a typically strong economically left-wing agenda – even to a greater extent than the offspring of workers. Given the trend of occupational upgrading, these findings may point at the fact that the relatively high social democratic support among contemporary SCP is mainly a legacy of their working-class background – and will decrease in next generations. Patterns of socialization in the SCP parental class of origin seem, however, to be related to left-wing support, but rather for green and left-libertarian and radical left alternatives. We take up the question of the SCP legacy further in Section 4.4.2, after we focus on differences in the effect of class of origin across regions and between generations of respondents.

In Figure 4.3, we present the AMEs of class of origin separately for the three regions of Western Europe. Northwestern Europe is the largest group of countries in our sample and therefore displays lower standard errors than the other two regions. The patterns across the three regions are relatively similar and mirror largely those from Figure 4.2, but there are some relevant differences. First, as expected, in Northwestern Europe we observe a relatively strong legacy of socialization in a working-class environment for left-wing support, particularly the Social Democrats. In the other two regions, we observe this as well, but the contrasts with an OMC background are smaller. Second, like concluded from Figure 4.2, having SCP roots does not have a similar effect as having working-class roots does (they do not show different levels of social democratic support than those with OMC roots, across all regions). However, in Northwestern Europe, socialization in the SCP does predict higher green and left-libertarian support, compared to socialization in the OMC. The fact that this difference is not present in the other two regions demonstrates the earlier transformation to post-industrial class–party realignments in Northwestern Europe, which is the reason why subsequent analyses focus on this region only.

Figure 4.3 AMEs of parental class (reference category: OMC) on support for party families, across geographical regions

Source: Authors’ calculations using ESS 2002–2010.

The results presented in Figures 4.2 and 4.3 suggest that parental class of origin generates a legacy in party leaning that persists over time and continues to influence offspring’s electoral behaviour, even net of respondents’ own class location. Moreover, some of the differences in the impact of parental class of origin and respondents’ class seem to indicate that current class–party alignments differ from those prevalent in the past. This is to be expected given the fast pace of post-industrial realignment. As different studies have manifested, the core electorates of left-wing parties have substantially changed over the past few decades (Gingrich and Häusermann Reference Gingrich and Häusermann2015; Benedetto et al. Reference Benedetto, Hix and Mastrorocco2020), and what were once their natural electoral preserve – workers – are now increasingly contested by radical right parties (Oesch and Rennwald Reference Oesch and Rennwald2018). This changing alignment between social class and parties could also affect the socialization into a specific partisan leaning. To illustrate this with an example, the kind of working-class left-wing legacy that was built in the 1960s – and the impact of socialization into this milieu – might take on very different nature in the early 2000s, as workers have increasingly realigned with the Radical Right. To explore this possibility, we disaggregate the effect of parental class of origin by different generations: from silent generation respondents to millennials.

Figure 4.4 presents AMEs of parental class of origin on support for different party families by generations. All coefficients indicate deviations from the reference category, offspring from the OMC. This figure presents some varying patterns of how the impact of class of origin differs across generations, which are exemplary for trends of realignment in which the class base of particularly parties on the left has changed. Focusing on parties in the left field and their core electorates, we observe that among voters from the silent generation there is a clear social democratic working-class legacy. Voters with working-class origins are almost 10 per cent more likely to vote for this party family than OMC offspring, while a similar impact is not visible for SCP offspring. On the contrary, the latter appear less likely to vote social democratic than voters with OMC roots. At the same time, a weak left-wing legacy in terms of support for radical left or green and left-libertarian parties is apparent for the offspring of SCP already in the silent generation.

Figure 4.4 AMEs of parental class (reference category: OMC) on support for party families, across generations, for Northwestern Europe

Source: Authors’ calculations using ESS 2002–2010.

The picture, however, is quite different if we focus on gen X or millennial respondents, for whom patterns of class–party realignment are reflected in the impact of class of origin of new strongholds of the Left. In these younger generations, we find evidence for a left-wing legacy among the offspring of SCP, for all three party families in the left field. This points at offspring of SCPs having been socialized into generalized support for left-wing parties, from the Radical Left and the Green Left, to the Social Democrats. For millennials, some of these differences are not statistically significant, but this could be partly attributed to the lower frequency of observations in this generation. The fact that SCP offspring is not only more supportive of the New Left but also of the Radical Left compared to OMC offspring, displays a trend of increasing support for the Left in general, with a corresponding decline in support for the Moderate Right. This marks an increasing distinction of socialization in the OMC compared to the new middle class, the SCP. As some of the left-wing legacy becomes stronger for the offspring of SCP as we move to younger generations, we observe a parallel decline in these allegiances among workers’ offspring. In fact, among millennials, offspring of workers are as likely to vote social democratic as offspring of SCP. Interestingly, among the children of workers, we observe an increasing contrast in the lower likelihood to support green and left-libertarian parties in comparison to the offspring of the OMC.

While the left-wing impact of having a working-class origin appears to have diminished for younger generations, we do not observe a parallel increase in favour of a radical-right legacy. Moreover, the lower probability of voting for the Moderate Right among workers’ offspring (in comparison to the OMC) appears quite stable over generations. Hence, it appears that working-class origins have somewhat ‘de-aligned’ from the Left, but there has not been a parallel ‘realignment’ in support for the Right. Among SCP offspring, we do, however, find evidence of left-wing realignment, because, as explained earlier, support for the left field is higher among younger generations with this background. Among the offspring of TCP, we find little evidence of changing alignments. Their electoral preferences resemble those of the OMC across all generations.

Focusing on long-term legacies of left-wing support, these analyses clearly highlight that the kind of social democratic legacies apparent for the offspring of workers in older generations are not replicated for any other classes or generations. While SCP could be building a new left-wing legacy among its offspring (rather for green and left-libertarian and radical left alternatives), this is in no way comparable to the strong parental effects visible for silent generation respondents with working-class roots. This speaks to a certain unique imprint of having a working-class origin among older generations that is not replicated in current realigned patterns of class-party linkages.

4.4.2 Party Family Support by Patterns of Intergenerational Social Mobility

Previous analyses have shown relevant differences in party support across parental class of origin and respondents’ own class of destination but did not consider these two in conjunction with each other. Therefore, we now model specific combinations of class of origin and destination. To more precisely investigate to what extent the left-wing support of current SCP is contingent on their working-class background and explore whether a new model of SCP support is sustainable in the long run, we estimate regression models by different patterns of intergenerational social mobility. For the purpose of our analysis, we specifically focus on transitions into and out of the SCP class. In Figure 4.5, we present results for the former. The graphs display predicted levels of party family support.

Figure 4.5 Average predicted levels of support for party families by patterns of intergenerational mobility for Northwestern Europe (focus: into SCP)

Source: Authors’ calculations using ESS 2002–2010.

When comparing the social democratic support from SCP with and without a working-class background, it shows that SCP with working-class origins are not only more likely to support the Social Democrats, they also show a lower likelihood of voting for the Moderate Right. Hence, a working-class background is associated to a more distinct left-wing allegiance. Only immobile workers are less likely to support the Moderate Right compared to SCP with working-class roots – showing a certain pattern of so-called acculturation to the SCP class of destination (de Graaf et al. Reference De Graaf, Nieuwbeerta and Heath1995). Interestingly, SCP with a working-class background and intergenerationally immobile workers show similar levels of social democratic party support. In what concerns other types of left-wing allegiances, a working-class background aligns SCP more with radical left parties, and less so with green and left-libertarian parties. Hence, this working-class legacy appears more strongly related to party families pertaining to the left bloc on the economic dimension (rather than on the societal dimension).

When considering the different categories from the immobile OMC to the immobile workers, each category shows a decreasing level of support for the Moderate Right, and increasing support for the Social Democrats. While among immobile workers support for the Social Democrats is higher than support for the Moderate Right, this pattern is reversed for SCP with a non-working-class origin. Processes of adaptation to the class of destination for SCP mean that the Moderate Right is a direct competitor from the Social Democrats in the support from this class. In the long run, these results may point at decreasing social democratic support in the future, when the legacy of a parental working class is reduced over time by patterns of occupational upgrading. Other left-wing parties and the Moderate Right, on the other hand, hold relatively higher levels of support from SCP without working-class roots, a class that is likely to become larger over time.

In Figure 4.6, we explore the potential legacy of the SCP – the class displaying among the highest levels of social democratic and other left-wing party support – towards the next generation, by asking how being socialized in this class predicts levels of party support. To approximate what future patterns of intergenerational transmission of preferences might entail, we reduce the sample to the two youngest generations in the sample (Gen X and Millennials). These results need to be interpreted as a tentative answer to our question, since relatively few individuals have been socialized in the SCP (class of origin), compared to the current size of this class (as class of destination), and therefore the size of the sample is reduced (which also explains the larger confidence intervals). The findings indicate that those socialized in the SCP that moved to a different middle-class position (OMC) – a common transition of intergenerational social mobility in the post-industrial era – are not very likely to support the Social Democrats, displaying similar levels of social democratic support as the immobile OMC, and lower than the immobile SCP. These findings, together with the high support for the Moderate Right, mainly point at a process of acculturation to the class of destination.

Figure 4.6 Average predicted levels of support for party families by patterns of intergenerational mobility among Gen X or Millennial respondents for Northwestern Europe (focus: out of SCP)

Source: Authors’ calculations using ESS 2002–2010.

If we focus on other parties within the left-wing bloc, we see some indications of a slightly stronger left-wing legacy among SCPs offspring, but not to the extent of the left-wing alignment we observe among intergenerationally immobile SCPs. The immobile SCPs display highest support levels of all classes for the green and left-libertarian parties and the Radical Left. The probability to vote for these parties is lower for SCP-origin voters in the OMC but remains slightly larger than those displayed by the intergenerationally immobile OMC. We observe similar patterns among workers with SCP roots: they show higher green and left-libertarian and radical left support than immobile workers. These results are an indication of modest SCP-origin socialization effects, when offspring holds a different class. If being socialized in the SCP has any left-leaning legacy, it seems like its allegiance lies more with the Radical Left and green and left-libertarian parties, than with the Social Democrats.

Taken together, these findings indicate that, as the offspring of workers are likely to become less numerous over time, the same goes for the legacy of this class in retaining social democratic (and other left-wing party) support, predicting likely lower levels of social democratic support among future generations.