Throwing Darts at the EU: Revisiting Radical Right Parties' Winning Formulas after the Crises

A series of multiple crises, such as the Euro Crisis (2008-2014) and the Refugee Crisis (2015-onwards), have occurred in Western Europe, resulting in a new transnational cleavage. Radical Right Parties (RRPs) have been the electoral winners of these crises, gaining votes and seats. In the aftermath of the Euro Crisis, the RRPs have probably increased their voting preferences on a Pro-/-Anti-European autonomous conflict dimension. However, this article posits that the Refugee Crisis may have made the system of inter-party conflicts more complex. Indeed, RRPs have been far from being single-issue Eurosceptic parties, developing new electoral winning formulas, encompassing economic and broader cultural issues. This paper seeks to ascertain if these parties have strategically politicized the EU issues vis-à-vis other prominent issues. After the economic stagnation, RRPs have re-profiled themselves as economically conservative, while the immigration flows have accentuated the immigration issue saliency, overshadowing the EU-related issues. Therefore, in the aftermath of the Refugee Crisis, the RRPs have increased their entrepreneurship on Anti-Immigration and Economic Conservatism, with their degree of EU issue entrepreneurship being equal (H1). Moreover, this work observes the evolution of the electoral preferences among RRPs, hypothesising that while the Euro Crisis fostered a stronger voter-party congruence along a Pro-/-Anti-EU dimension, the Refugee Crisis exacerbated the impact of Immigration and Economic issues. Consequently: In the aftermath of the Refugee Crisis, the RRPs have increasingly maximised their electoral preferences on Anti-Immigration and Economic issues, with the degree of EU issue voting remaining stable. By using the CHES surveys (2010-2017) and the EES plus ICCP (De Sio et al. forthcoming) electoral data (2009-2018), evidence is provided on the different stages of RRP politicization efforts and voting preferences on these three core issue domains (Economics/Immigration/European Integration) in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK.