Mitigating Economic deprivation? NextGenEU and radical-right vote

The growing electoral success of radical-right parties is a defining feature of contemporary European democracies. Debates around ``left-behind regions'' and the ``geography of discontent'' focus on the economic traits of areas with high radical-right support. This paper adds to this literature by incorporating strategies used to reactivate the economy following a negative economic shock. To do so, the paper investigates how large-scale EU funding through the NextGenerationEU programme has affected radical-right voting, using data from over 3,000 Portuguese parishes. Portugal faced severe economic vulnerability after the 2010 crisis, especially in interior and southern regions which affected the electoral fortunes of establishment parties. However, we argue that EU-funded local projects may reduce discontent and radical-right vote shares, particularly in vulnerable areas. We use fine-grained geographical data to test the impact of receiving EU funds under varying levels of economic vulnerability. Our dataset combines project-level RRF funding data with electoral and economic indicators from 3,091 parishes in the period 2021-2026. We examine the relationship between the intensity of EU funds at local level and the electoral success of radical-right platforms using a difference-in-differences approach.