The elections in New Zealand were the first
time they had moved from a majoritarian electoral system, giving voters
several alternatives to traditional parties.
The correlations between anti-party sentiment and anti-party voting are in
columns 2 to 4. As noted above, there appears to be no relationship between
anti-party sentiment and voting for a far-left party. Yet a closer inspection of
the correlations suggests a more complicated picture. In countries where there
is not a viable far-right party, anti-party sentiment correlates more strongly,
albeit still modestly, with support for a far-left party. Except in New Zealand,
the presence of a far-right party eliminates any correlation between anti-party
sentiment and support for a far-left party.
In contrast, distrust in parties is consistently correlated with far-right
party support. This is strongest in Denmark, but is relatively robust for all
countries except Switzerland. Thus, anti-party sentiment does lead to a vote
for anti-party parties, but all such parties are not equally attractive. The
extreme left attracts distrustful voters primarily when they are the only antiparty
option, whereas far-right parties seem to be the preferred choice.
Distrustful citizens are not only more likely to support far-right parties but,
as secondary analyses not shown here indicate, a large number of far-left
voters actually are quite optimistic about political parties as agents of
democracy.
The final column shows the relationship between anti-party sentiment and
all modes of anti-party establishment behaviour – including, spoiling one’s
ballot, abstention and protest votes. The correlations are again modest, but
they are all in the expected direction and significant.