TY - JOUR
T1 - Competing for Loyalists? How Party Positioning Affects Populist Radical Right Voting
AU - Chou, Winston
AU - Dancygier, Rafaela
AU - Egami, Naoki
AU - Jamal, Amaney A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: For generous funding, we thank the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
Funding Information:
We thank Cung Truong Hoang and Ramona Rischke for valuable research assistance. For helpful comments we thank Verena Benoit, Tim Brackmann, Noam Gidron, Julia Gray, Anselm Hager, Will Horne, Alan Jacobs, Hans Lueders, Moritz Marbach, Sascha Riaz and seminar participants at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Harvard University, the Immigration Policy Lab, Princeton University, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Pittsburgh. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: For generous funding, we thank the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - As populist radical right parties muster increasing support in many democracies, an important question is how mainstream parties can recapture their voters. Focusing on Germany, we present original panel evidence that voters supporting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—the country’s largest populist radical right party—resemble partisan loyalists with entrenched anti-establishment views, seemingly beyond recapture by mainstream parties. Yet this loyalty does not only reflect anti-establishment voting, but also gridlocked party-issue positioning. Despite descriptive evidence of strong party loyalty, experimental evidence reveals that many AfD voters change allegiances when mainstream parties accommodate their preferences. However, for most parties this repositioning is extremely costly. While mainstream parties can attract populist radical right voters via restrictive immigration policies, they alienate their own voters in doing so. Examining position shifts across issue dimensions, parties, and voter groups, our research demonstrates that, absent significant changes in issue preferences or salience, the status quo is an equilibrium.
AB - As populist radical right parties muster increasing support in many democracies, an important question is how mainstream parties can recapture their voters. Focusing on Germany, we present original panel evidence that voters supporting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—the country’s largest populist radical right party—resemble partisan loyalists with entrenched anti-establishment views, seemingly beyond recapture by mainstream parties. Yet this loyalty does not only reflect anti-establishment voting, but also gridlocked party-issue positioning. Despite descriptive evidence of strong party loyalty, experimental evidence reveals that many AfD voters change allegiances when mainstream parties accommodate their preferences. However, for most parties this repositioning is extremely costly. While mainstream parties can attract populist radical right voters via restrictive immigration policies, they alienate their own voters in doing so. Examining position shifts across issue dimensions, parties, and voter groups, our research demonstrates that, absent significant changes in issue preferences or salience, the status quo is an equilibrium.
KW - elections
KW - Germany
KW - political parties
KW - populism
KW - radical right parties
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U2 - 10.1177/0010414021997166
DO - 10.1177/0010414021997166
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85102709893
SN - 0010-4140
VL - 54
SP - 2226
EP - 2260
JO - Comparative Political Studies
JF - Comparative Political Studies
IS - 12
ER -