The European Social Survey and the World Value Survey

Some version of the right left divide can be found throughout time and in pretty radically different settings. The european social survey asks questions about basic personal values, which make no reference to anything explicitly political whatsoever. It's a ten item scale, but it's kind of like five axes with opposing poles,. So score on this scale predict voting behavior much more strongly than economic status or ethnicity or gender. And this is true in pean countries with very different contemporary and historic political and economic conditions.