Plummeting Pillars : Waning support of pole parties in Norden

Abstract

Political landscapes or the political scene in the Nordic countries is often regarded of being very similar, whether it is the party system, voters’ behaviour, or political discourse. Since the formation of the political party system in Norden, three party types have been the ballast of the Nordic party landscape. These are in each country a social democratic party, a conservative party, and a centre-agrarian party. Those parties were identified by Jan Sundberg as the Nordic “pole parties”. In the last few years these parties’ support has been waning and these parties do not have as much combined electoral support as they once did. In this thesis three different variables will be analysed to determine if they have affected the support towards these pole parties. The variables in question are party identification, trust towards politicians, and voter turnout. National election studies and formal turnout figures will be used to determine whether these variables affect the support of towards Nordic pole parties. The methods used are quantitative binary logistic regression analysis and coefficient correlation analysis. The key findings in this thesis are that all three variables play a certain role in the waning support of pole parties in Norden, however, all in a different way

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