Lönnqvist, Jan Erik M.Ilmarinen, Ville JuhaniSortheix, Florencia M.2020-07-242020-07-242020Lönnqvist JEM, Ilmarinen VJ, Sortheix FM. Polarization in the wake of the European refugee crisis: a longitudinal study of the Finnish political elite’s attitudes towards refugees and the environment. Journal of Social and Political Psychology. 2020;8(1):173-97. DOI: 10.5964/jspp.v8i1.12362195-3325http://hdl.handle.net/10230/45193We investigated political polarization among the 28284 candidates in the Finnish municipal election who ran for municipal council in 2012, 2017, or both, and had responded to a Voting Advice Application. Our results revealed political polarization in terms of both conversion (longitudinal analysis, n = 6643) and recruitment (cross-sectional comparison of first-time candidates, n = 13054). The populist radical-right Finns Party became even more anti-refugee, and the pro-refugee Green League became even more pro-refugee. The Finns Party, in particular, has constructed the Green League as their enemies, which could explain why the Finns Party moved in an anti-environmental direction, as well as the increased issue-alignment between refugee-attitudes and environmental attitudes. We also observed increased within-party homogeneity in almost all parties. In the discussion, we focus on the nature of the association between refugee and environmental attitudes.application/pdfengThis is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.5964/jspp.v8i1.1236Political psychologyAttitude changeImmigrationEnvironmentPopulismElectionsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess