Strategic Eurosceptics and Polite Xenophobes: Support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) at the 2009 European Parliament Elections (original) (raw)

Britain has long been identified with a strong tradition of Euroscepticism,yet we know little about the drivers of support for openly Eurosceptic parties. In this article, we draw on a unique large-scale dataset to undertake the first ever individual level analysis of the social and attitudinal drivers of support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) at the 2009 elections to the European Parliament. We find that while Euroscepticism is the most important driver of UKIP support it is not the whole story. Other attitudinal drivers, namely dissatisfaction towards mainstream parties and xenophobia, are also important. Examining vote-switching between first and second order elections we also find evidence of a distinction between two types of supporter: more affluent middle class ‘strategic defectors’ from the mainstream Conservative Party who support UKIP to register their Euroscepticism; on the other are more economically marginal and politically disaffected ‘core loyalists’ who are attracted to UKIP by its xenophobic, increasingly Islamophobic and populist anti-establishment strategy. Our analysis suggests that UKIP is well positioned to recruit a more stable and enduring base of support from its extreme right-wing competitor, the British National Party (BNP), and become a significant vehicle of xenophobia and, more specifically, Islamophobia in modern Britain.

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