Political Parties Beat Them All. Partisanship as the Key Factor Explaining Self-Placement on the Left-Right Scale: Evidence from Spain

Abstract

Location on the left-right scale is one of the most widespread ways citizens use to express their political positions in western democracies.

There is a large body of literature explaining the factors on which position on the scale is based, mainly, social structure, values and partisanship. This article focuses on citizens’ positions on the left-right scale in Spain using the 2008 and 2017 waves of the European Values Study (EVS) to present a comprehensive explanatory model, including, to our knowledge, the widest spectrum for the value dimension examined to date. We conclude that partisanship is the most important factor in explaining self-positioning on the scale.