Political Climate : How Environmental Attitudes relates to Support for Radical Right-wing Parties in the Nordic Countries

The Nordic countries are geographically, culturally and politically close, and have all witnessed an upsurge in support for radical right-wing parties over the past decades. Although the five parties: the Danish People’s Party, the Finns Party, the Icelandic Progressive Party, the Norwegian Progress Party, and the Sweden Democrats, are different when it comes to party history and how accepted they have been by other parties, they are today similar in their anti-immigration rhetoric, their critique of the established elites and to some extent their welfare chauvinism. According to theories on radical right-wing parties and environmental attitudes, caring for nature and the environment would make a person less probable to vote for a radical right-wing party. Using data from the European Social Survey, the relationship between environmental attitudes and radical right-wing support is examined. The initial results support this thesis, but when adding control variables the relationship is no longer significant. However, when looking at the countries separately, it shows that the relationship between environmental values and radical right-wing voting varies across the Nordic countries. Here, Norway stands out as the country with the strongest negative relationship between environmental values and support for radical right-wing parties