Models for Predicting the Dutch Vote along the Left-Right and the Libertarianism-Authoritarianism Dimensions

Abstract

There are two "fundamental dimensions of ideological contro versy" in The Netherlands which are stable through the period 1970-85: socio-economic left-right, with egalitarian implications, and libertarianism-authoritarianism with the underlying value of freedom. Both dimensions are "belief systems" based on highly interrelated attitude scales, and both are "sustained" by stable philosophical dimensions: socialism and liberalism for the left-right dimension, conservatism and authoritarianism for the libertarian-authoritarian dimension. The ordering of political parties by means of average scores of their supporters is different on each dimension. Then, obviously, two sets of causal models can be developed, with party preference along each dimension as the dependent variable. The models developed in this study contain social characteristics (age, education, income, class and religion), philosophical dimensions, ideologi cal dimensions and, in addition, left-right and progressive-conservative self-identifications. The left-right vote is best predicted by left-right self- identification followed by a mixture of other determinants of about equal strength: left-right ideological position, socialism, liberalism, conservatism, religion, social class and income. The authoritarian vote is predominantly determined by religion, followed at some distance by left-right self- identification, libertarian-authoritarian ideology, conservatism, socialism, left-right ideological position and social class. Income and liberalism do not play an important role here. Age and educational level have negligible effects as predictors of either vote. The role of ideology as a determinant of the vote in a European context is contrasted with American evidence and the content validity of ideological self-identification in terms of left-right is questioned.