Women voters of the radical right: Who are they and what motivates them?

Over the last decades, radical-right political parties (RRPs) have established themselves as perhaps the most successful new party family across Western Europe. Understandably, therefore, a lot of research has been devoted to answering the question "who votes for the radical right?". One of the most consistent and resilient findings in this literature is that these parties enjoy support overwhelmingly from men, but not from women. Yet, throughout Europe, the gender gap in support is narrowing and, in some cases, has now closed entirely. Now, more than ever, women do support RRPS. While existing work has focused on explaining why women are more reluctant to vote for RRPs, it has largely sidestepped better understanding the women that do. As this group of supporters grows, we aim to contribute to extant work by better understanding women’s motivations for far-right support. This paper contributes to this research by using a combination of cross-country survey data and original surveys with open-ended questions investigating voters’ reasons for supporting parties on the right in the UK and Germany. In so doing, we explore the socio-economic and ideological profiles of women who support RRPs in comparison to women who do not, and to men who do. We also use quantitative text techniques to identify the key themes and distinctions between men and women in their expressed reasons for supporting (or not) these parties. Given the sweeping success of far-right parties in Western Europe, our research provides important new insights into variation in voter motivations for support.