The Party Preferences of Temporary Workers

Abstract

In this chapter, I will analyse the party preferences of temporary workers. As shown in the theoretical discussion in Chapter 3, there are rather ambiguous predictions in the literature. Political behaviour explanations based on employment risk predict a tendency towards left parties in general, while proponents of insider-outsider theory are undecided between predicting a tendency towards economically liberal parties and a tendency to be alienated from the party system. I and others have argued that we should expect a tendency towards small parties to the left of social democracy, in particular green and other new left parties (cf. Häusermann, 2010; Marx and Picot, 2013, 2014). The results of the previous chapter lend more credibility to the latter claim. Temporary workers are more supportive of the welfare state, but they are less interested in defending job security regulation. This comes close to the policy mix new left parties advocate (Chapter 3).