Are Young Men Driving The Surge in Radical-Right Support? Evidence from the European Social Survey (2002–2022)

Public debate increasingly suggests that rising support for radical-right parties in Europe is driven by young men. This paper reassesses that claim using both party-level and individual-level survey evidence. We analyse data from the European Social Survey (2002–2022) to examine whether young men are disproportionately likely to support radical-right parties compared to other social groups. At the party level, we apply a novel measure of parties’ social bases proposed by Marks et al. to assess the over- and underrepresentation of age, gender, education, and urban–rural residence in party electorates across Europe. While overall support for radical-right (TAN) parties has increased over the past two decades, young voters remain slightly underrepresented in their electorates. Instead, changes in radical-right support are more strongly associated with education, gender, and territorial divides than with age. Additional analyses using individual-level ESS data corroborate these patterns. Young men do not exhibit markedly higher probabilities of voting for radical-right parties than the average voter, while young women are substantially less likely to do so and are considerably more supportive of left-progressive parties. The highest likelihood of radical-right voting is observed among middle-aged men rather than among younger cohorts. Overall, the findings challenge the widespread narrative of a youth-driven radical-right surge. Instead, they suggest that radical-right support is a multi-generational phenomenon rooted in enduring social and cultural cleavages, with implications for both research on political conflict and policy responses to radical-right mobilisation.