A different story

Abstract Chapter 8 contrasts the behaviour of West European market cosmopolitans with their counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to highlight the importance of the former’s recent ideological shifts in explaining their electoral behaviour. As previous work on CEE voter preferences suggests that market cosmopolitan ideological positions have long been well established, I theorize that these voters are unlikely to have loyalties to parties distant from their own position, as in Western Europe. In line with this, I find that while CEE market cosmopolitans display similarly high levels of partisan and left-right identification to their Western European equivalents, they are significantly more, not less, likely to follow a spatial logic of electoral behaviour than the rest of the electorate. These findings also offer an indication that West European market cosmopolitans may begin to vote more spatially in the future the longer they remain in this ideological quadrant.