Study of European electoral data suggests social democratic parties alienate supporters by moving towards the political centre

Adopting rightwing policies on issues such as immigration and the economy does not help centre-left parties win votes, according to new analysis of European electoral and polling data.

Faced with a 20-year decline in their vote share, accompanied by rising support for the right, far right and sometimes the far left, social democratic parties across Europe have increasingly sought salvation by moving towards the political centre.

  • taladar@sh.itjust.works
    9·
    10 months ago

    More generally speaking, adopting any policies from currently more popular parties purely for votes is stupid. Why would any voter who already likes that policy with a party that is ideologically convinced of that policy switch to a party that merely adopted the policy for votes except maybe for the edge case where the ideologically convinced party is so small that it could never get elected at all or grow to that stage?