(When and Why) Accomodation is futile: Availability of populist radical right voters for mainstream parties in Europe

Studies on populist radical right parties (PRRPs) often focus on their voters’ socio-demographic and socio-economic background, their attitudes towards immigration and cultural issues in general, and the role of populist attitudes. Another subfield concentrates on (arising) practical consequences, particularly counterstrategies against the populist radical right contesters aimed at winning back the voters of the PRRPs. Building on both strands of literature, we investigate the availability of populist radical right parties’ voters for mainstream parties. Are there segments within the electorate of PRRPs that can be regained by (specific) established non-populist parties and if so, how should mainstream parties position themselves on crucial issues? Using data from the European Election Study (EES) and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), we analyze the availability of PRRP voters on the electoral market. We find a comparatively low availability of PRRP voters and argue that this low availability can be traced back to (a) the voters’ more extreme ideological and issue positions (‘cultural backlash hypothesis’), (b) the strength of protest attitudes represented by, e.g., low external efficacy and dissatisfaction with democracy (‘democratic protest hypothesis’) and (c) the interplay of relative issue positions and protest attitudes (‘interaction hypothesis’). More specifically, we hypothesize that strong protest attitudes decrease the role of issue proximity for the likelihood of winning (back) PRRP voters. Accordingly, simple repositioning (e.g., towards stricter immigration laws) is not a substantively profitable strategy for mainstream parties. Generally, the chances for the mainstream parties to win back voters from the PRRP are rather low in the short term, and we thus discuss the strategic implication of our findings.