In this paper we study the party preferences of temporary workers in four European welfare states. Temporary employment has been rising in many European countries as a consequence of deregulation as well as post-industrialization. From a political perspective this labour market transformation implies a changing composition of national electorates. That the welfare state, through regulation and social benefits, shapes the socio-structural basis of electoral politics is, in fact, often overlooked in the literature on electoral change. We take up this issue by examining the party preferences of fixed-term workers in four welfare states with markedly different welfare regimes: Denmark, UK, Germany and Spain. Fixed-term work differs in quantity and quality between these states. Hence, our independent variable is labour market regulation, which shapes the economic interests and, hence, the ‘political demand’ by atypical workers. On the other side, our four case studies take into account ‘political supply’ by looking at the party system and at the policy decisions taken by government parties. Based on our previous research (a micro-level analysis of the German case), we expect that fixed-term workers display over-proportional preferences for left-libertarian or left-socialist (i.e. left of social-democratic) parties in countries where they are clearly disadvantaged with respect to workers in permanent full-time jobs: Germany and Spain. By contrast, we do not expect their preferences to differ significantly in countries with low job security for unlimited contracts: UK and Denmark. Our analysis builds on data from various waves of the European Social Survey and the EU Labour Force Survey as well as case studies of labour market policy and party politics in each state.
