Fighting fire with fire? The effect of mainstream parties’ accommodative strategies on immigration on voting for right-wing populist parties

Right-wing populist parties are undoubtedly one of the principal political actors in Western European democracies, constituting a challenge to the old mainstream parties. These parties are more successful among voters who demand more restrictions on immigration because of their nativist character. However, after years of a steady increase in their consensus, right-wing populist parties experienced setbacks on some occasions. Across Western Europe, a growing number of mainstream parties are co-opting the policies on immigration adopted by right-wing populist parties during electoral campaigns (e.g., Austria, Denmark, Netherlands). In these circumstances, right-wing populists reported considerable electoral losses at the ballot box. Some studies suggested that mainstream parties (Christian Democrats, Conservatives, or Social democrats) are increasingly adopting accommodative strategies to tackle the electoral success of right-wing populists. Yet, little research has focused on how these strategies on anti-immigration issues influence individuals’ support for right-wing populist parties. In other words, do these strategies affect voters’ decision to support right-wing populist parties across Western European countries? Using multilevel models with combined data from the ESS (2002-2018) and the Manifesto Project, this study examines the effect of these strategies performed by mainstream parties on voting for right-wing populists across Western European countries. This study focuses on party-positions on the two core dimensions of right-wing populist parties’ campaigns: cultural nationalism and economic nationalism. The former involves party-positions regarding the need to defend national culture from the threat represented by immigrants; the latter emphasises all the positions highlighting the need to protect the national economy from foreigners. This study proposes one measure of accommodative strategies for each dimension. It indicates to what extent mainstream parties are co-opting right-wing populists immigration policies. Mainstream parties outpower right-wing populist parties in two ways: they have more governmental experience and control over the media. With this advantage, they are in a better position to advertise anti-immigration policies and gain issue-ownership. Thus, the expectation is that when mainstream parties co-opt these parties on their core issues, they undermine their issue-ownership and, consequently, their electoral support. The results show that accommodative strategies on cultural nationalism decrease the likelihoods of voting for right-wing populists, especially among those showing negative attitudes towards immigrants. Differently, these strategies on economic nationalism do not affect voting of those manifesting high anti-immigration attitudes. Hence, in circumstances where mainstream parties adopt similar or harder anti-immigration policies than right-wing populist parties’, voters with high anti-immigration attitudes are less likely to vote for them. These findings have important implications for future studies about right-wing populist support. Firstly, the results suggest that voters asking for more restrictive immigration policies are more responsive to political messages depicting immigrants as a threat to national culture, rather than to national economic well-being. Secondly, studies about right-wing populist voting should include party-competition measures over the immigration issue, given that their electoral performances principally rely on that.