Far-right parties are increasingly engaged in strategic liberalism as means to increase their legitimacy and to expand their electoral support. This paper assesses if these strategies work. Leveraging a pre-registered conjoint experiment fielded in Germany during recent coalition negotiations, respondents were asked to choose between hypothetical coalition constellations that varied in their composition (including or excluding the far right), their use of femo- or homonationalist rhetorical frames to legitimise anti-immigration stances, and their explicit positions on gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights. The findings reveal that strategic liberal framing has a net null effect on coalition support: doing so attracts new support from progressive voters while simultaneously depressing support among right-leaning voters. Substantive pro-gender (but not pro-LGBTQ+) policy commitments significantly boost support even for coalitions that include far-right partners. These results underscore the limited persuasive power of instrumental inclusion rhetoric and highlight how actual policy substance matters more than symbolic framing. The causal study contributes to emerging research on the strategic politicisation of gender and sexuality in Europe as an (ineffective) electoral tool for illiberal actors as well as broader debates on the electoral strategies of far-right parties and the coalitions they aspire to form.
