Far-right against green: the re-emergence of geographically defined voting patterns and the new environment cleavage in Western Europe

Halikiopoulou, D. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1815-6882, Vrakopoulos, C. and Arndt, C. (2026) Far-right against green: the re-emergence of geographically defined voting patterns and the new environment cleavage in Western Europe. European Political Science Review, 18 (1). pp. 67-86. ISSN 1755-7747 doi: 10.1017/s1755773925100155

Abstract/Summary

This article argues that opposition to environmental protection is key to understanding the development of new voting patterns in Western Europe. We theorize climate change as a collective action problem with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs and develop a range of hypotheses about the ways in which concentrated resistance to climate change measures may be channelled into electoral behaviour. We test our hypotheses using data from the European Social Survey. Our results suggest that the backlash against environmental protection is triggered by the potential ‘losers’ of these processes, contributing to the emergence of a territorial cleavage between green voters residing in metropolitical areas, and far-right voters residing in rural and peripheral areas. Our argument explains the development of new political alliances and highlights the importance of green attitudes for the emergence of societal cleavages.

Additional Information	A Corrigendum to this article was published on 17/12/2025 and is available here https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773925100271
Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/127008
Identification Number/DOI	10.1017/s1755773925100155
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Politics, Economics and International Relations > Politics and International Relations
Additional Information	A Corrigendum to this article was published on 17/12/2025 and is available here https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755773925100271
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
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