The change on the part of the center-left parties is well known. During the postwar period, Europe's centre-left parties had relatively clear economic profiles, based on the idea that the task of democratic governments was to protect citizens from Iceland Phone Number List the negative consequences of capitalism. Specifically, this involved promoting the Welfare State, market regulation and full employment policies, among other things. Although they Iceland Phone Number List tried to attract votes outside the traditional working class, their identities and claims remained class-based. In the late 20th century this began to change, as the center-left moved toward the center in economic terms, offering a watered-down or " kinder, softer " version of the policies put forth by its center-right competitors.
By the late 1990s, according to one study , " Social Democracy ... had more in common with its main competitors than with its own positions three Iceland Phone Number List cades earlier." As center-left parties watered down Iceland Phone Number List their economic policy stances, they also began to deemphasize class terms. in their speeches, and their leaders emerged less and less from the ranks of the working class and more from a highly educated elite. Although less pronounced Iceland Phone Number List and universal, around the same time that the center-left was beginning to shift to the center on economics, many center-right parties were moderating their positions on social and cultural issues, including "traditional" values, immigration and other concerns related to national identity, on which the center right had taken conservative positions.
Christian Democrats, for example, had viewed Iceland Phone Number List religious values, as well as traditional views of gender and sexuality, as crucial to their identity. Furthermore, many of these parties understood national identity in cultural or even ethnic terms, and were suspicious of immigration and multiculturalism. Nevertheless, community activities that they had previously done. Taken together, these shifts in center-left and center-right groupings left Iceland Phone Number List many voters without a party to represent their interests, particularly those with left-wing views on economics and moderate-to-conservative preferences on immigration, among others . others. These voters were concentrated among the population with lower levels of education and the working class, comprising approximately 20% to 25% of the electorate in Europe (as well as in the United States).