Surprising result of a scientific study: right-wing populist electoral successes in Europe go hand in hand with higher approval rates for immigration.
If a right-wing populist party wins elections, then these successes must have a negative impact on the population’s attitude towards migrants – this truism has not yet been questioned. Now two researchers – James Dennison from the European University Institute in Florence and Alexander Kustov from the University of North Carolina/Charlotte – have set out to verify the truth of this claim. Their study, which appears in the current issue of the specialist journal Public Opinion Quarterly, throws out of hand traditional assumptions. The two researchers have found that right-wing populist electoral successes have the opposite effect – an increase in positive attitudes towards immigration among Europeans.
FPÖ, Lega Nord, Front National, UKIP
For their study (“The Reverse Backlash: How the Success of Populist Radical Right Parties Relates to More Positive Immigration Attitudes”), Dennison and Kustov evaluated election results and survey data in a total of 24 European countries (including Austria) from 1989 to 2017 and did so compared whether and how the electoral performance of right-wing populist parties harmonizes with the attitude of the general population towards immigration. Incidentally, in Germany the FPÖ, the BZÖ and the Free Party of Salzburg were the subject of the investigation, in Germany the AfD, in France the Front National (now renamed Rassemblement National) by Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen, in Great Britain Nigel Farage’s anti-European United Kingdom Independence Party, in Poland the ruling party PiS and in Italy Matteo Salvini’s Lega Nord and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. Overall, the authors found that gains for right-wing populists over the period studied were accompanied by an increase in positive attitudes toward immigrants—an effect they dubbed the “reverse backlash.”