Unga väljare: den progressiva eller polariserade generationen? En kvantitativ studie om sambandet mellan jämställdhetsattityder och könsgapet i populistisk radikalhögerröstning bland unga väljare i Sveriges riksdagsval 2018 & 2022

Abstract

This study aims to scrutinize the gender gap in populist radical right voting among young voters, and whether differences in gender values can explain it. There is a debate in previous research on whether conservative or progressive gender values are more compatible with Populist Radical Right Party (PRRP) voting. PRRPs have long been associated with conservative gender values and a lack of gender equality policies. However, in recent years, PRRPs have made anti-immigration arguments in the name of women’s rights, claiming gender equality as a ‘western value’. Therefore, the relationship between gender values and PRRPs is paradoxical. Previous research has also tried explaining PRRP voting with cultural backlash – older voters with traditional values feel threatened by society’s progressive revolution and vote for PRRPs to show dissatisfaction. Nonetheless, the cultural backlash theory ignores young voters with traditional values. This study is based on survey-data from the Swedish parliament elections 2022 and 2018. The result shows that young voters demonstrate a greater gender gap in both PRRP voting and gender values. The results also show that, among young voters, gender values are strongly connected to immigration values, which makes gender values lose their statistically significant relationship with PRRP voting, under control for immigration values. Results also indicate that young voters were more polarized in the 2022 election, compared with the 2018 election. The implications of this study are that young voters are not to be viewed as only progressive, but polarized.