Embracing populism doesn’t hurt right-wing parties. It may help them.

A big debate – especially in Europe but even in the U.S. – is how to neutralize right-wing populism. 

In the U.S., perhaps the most common debate is whether and how much the Democratic Party should now moderate on the “social issues” or “cultural issues” that were allegedly central to Trump’s win in 2024. 

In Europe, the question is whether mainstream center-left and center-right parties should adopt right-wing populist views, particularly on immigration, in order to weaken radical right parties.

But does this strategy of “accommodation” actually work? New evidence from Europe suggests that it does not.

The research, by political scientists Werner Krause, Denis Cohen, and Tarik Abou-Chadi, looks at radical right success in Western Europe from 1976-2017. This time span is broader than some earlier work and captures more recent gains by radical right parties. Their analysis has two parts.

First, they look at whether the overall vote share won by radical right parties is correlated with changes in the positions of the mainstream parties. They analyze 350 mainstream party strategies across 108 elections.

Second, they look at individual voters. The question is whether voters switch between mainstream and radical right parties because of changes in mainstream party positions. In other words, if a center-right party adopts anti-immigration positions, does that “win back” some radical right voters?

Here’s what they find. When mainstream parties shift toward restrictive immigration positions, it has no statistically significant effect on the overall vote share of radical right parties.

Among individual voters, this accommodation strategy actually pushes voters to switch to radical right parties more than it pulls voters to mainstream parties. In other words, accommodation backfires.

The authors probe deeper to see if accommodation might work better or worse in some circumstances or contexts than others. They find that this backfire effect is more pronounced when radical right parties have established themselves as a persistent electoral threat, as opposed to when they are new and first breaking through. They also find that, in general, accommodation has become increasingly ineffective at helping mainstream parties over time. By the 2010s, the backfire effect emerges clearly.

The authors are careful to note that their research can’t establish strict causation. It is also possible that accommodation might work in certain contexts that they aren’t able to fully capture, even with this fairly comprehensive set of data.

That said, it’s a sobering piece of research. It cautions us against assuming that “moving to the center” works or that you can weaken a political party by stealing its positions. You may simply end up helping that party!

Indeed, the results appear to support a quote from the Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, which the authors cite: Voters “prefer the original to the copy.”