Economic fluctuations and political self-placement

•Cohort of factors affect political self-placement on left–right scale.•Do changes in economic conditions affect this self-placement?•Eurobarometer data on political self-placement for twelve EU countries.•Fixed and random effects panel regression models estimated.•During recessions GDP per capita and unemployment cause mild shifts in self-placement. This paper examines whether economic conditions affect citizens’ political self-placement on the left–right scale of the political spectrum. A cohort of factors influence and determine such self-placements by citizens including ideology, social values, partisan allegiances, class perceptions, socio-economic characteristics, personality traits. Using data from the Euro-barometer surveys for twelve European Union countries over the period 1985–2009 this study investigates the effect that economic fluctuations have on political self-placement. Results reported herein from both fixed-effects and random-effects regression models indicate that, once we control for the differential transitory and permanent effects of economic conditions, we find that in the long-run and during economic upturns, there seems to be a quantitatively mild movement towards the political middle from the two opposite ends of the left–right dimension.