The rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe leads some mainstream political parties to attempt to regain the support of voters by adopting far-right pro-nationalist and anti-immigrant stances. However, new research coming out of Germany and Israel suggests that this strategy primarily benefits far-right parties and not the political mainstream.
Antonia C. May of the GESIS—Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences and Christian S. Czymara of Tel Aviv University and Goethe University in Frankfurt combined survey data from native-born residents in 26 European countries between 1995 and 2017 with party manifesto data.
Their analysis shows that, although 53% of European respondents held narrow conceptions of national identity over the studied period, only 7% of them reported preferring a far-right party. However, when political leaders across parties adopt exclusionary rhetoric, the likelihood of voters shifting towards far-right parties increases significantly, especially among those who uphold narrow conceptions of national identity. In other words, such exclusionary political elite discourses activate individuals with nativist images of the nation.
This sounds a lot like my country Malaysia. The used-to-be progressive leaning party are now doing the conservative-leaning policy to appease voter that will vote the conservative party anyway, while pissing the progressive voter off.
