International media and mainstream politicians cast the 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections as ‘an earthquake’ due to the increased vote for high-profile Eurosceptic parties such as the UK Independence Party and the French Front National. This rise in support was seen both as a reflection of the continuing political and economic crisis in Europe and the increasing dissatisfaction of European voters with the EU. Behind this reasoning stands the assumption that Eurosceptic parties are elected for their Eurosceptic positions. However, many of the successful Eurosceptic parties in 2014 were also radical right populist parties, whose ideological offer contains more than simply anti-EU positions. This gives rise to the question: Is the electoral success of radical right populist parties at the 2014 EP elections really an indicator first and foremost of a societal rejection of the European Union?
This paper therefore examines how ‘Eurosceptic’ supporters of radical right Eurosceptic parties in 2014 were, how salient Euroscepticism was for them and the parties they supported, and whether it matters if parties or voters are ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ Eurosceptics. To do so, we use the data from the online voting advice application developed for the 2014 EP election, EUandI, in addition to the CHES expert survey on party positions in order to analyse the positional congruence between nine radical right Eurosceptic parties and more than 30,000 of their self-identified voters.
