Attitudes, Ideology, and Support for the Radical Right in Europe

This paper seeks to identify the individual attitudes that determine support for radical right parties in Europe. Specifically, testing whether radical right ideology aligns with preferences of radical right supporters. Radical right ideology is defined with three ideological concepts: nativism, authoritarianism, and populism. Radical right support is indicated by a reported vote for a radical right party or self-affiliation with a radical right party. I test several hypotheses that consider how individual attitudes toward political, economic and social conditions drive support for radical right parties. Using data from the 2012 European Social Survey, I use logit regression to test my hypotheses. Findings indicate that negative attitudes toward the government and immigration increase the probability of support for a radical right party. Surprisingly, findings do not find support two common explanations for radical right support, economic grievances and attitudes toward cultural exclusivity. In fact, the findings indicate that positive views of national economic conditions actually increase radical right support while personal economic conditions have no effect. Rather, I find that only views of a negative economic impact of immigration boost radical right support. These findings have several implications for our understanding of the growth of the radical right after the 2007 financial crisis and the future of the radical right in Europe.