Most polls suggest that incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron will defeat radical-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the April 24 runoff presidential election. Still, Le Pen has done better in this election than in her previous 2017 bid. While she took only about 33 percent in the 2017 runoff against Macron, Politico’s Poll of Polls estimates that Le Pen could win 46 percent of the vote in this year’s runoff.
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What might explain Le Pen’s relative success? More female voter support. In the past, more men than women supported Le Pen’s radical-right party, the National Rally (then the National Front). Today, the gender gap has reversed, and more women than men express support for Le Pen. This is rather surprising, because previous research has shown that women are significantly less likely to vote for populist radical-right parties than men. How do we explain the French case?
Our research examines the gender gap in support for populist radical-right parties and identifies the conditions under which it can narrow — or even reverse. Here’s what you need to know.
Populist radical-right parties are risky, and women are more risk-averse than men
Voting for a populist radical-right party comes with a certain degree of risk. These parties are relatively unknown entities with limited parliamentary experience. They also challenge the certainties of the existing political order, questioning the status quo and campaigning against the political establishment. Although some voters will find such actions appealing, risk-averse voters will shun these parties during elections.
Research regularly finds women to be more risk-averse than men. (Of course, that’s on average; individual women and individual men may vary from that generalization.) And women generally tend to avoid voting for risky parties that have no chance of winning seats in parliament, including many of the populist radical-right parties. Risk-averse voters often abide by social norms and direct their ballot to mainstream and moderate causes and refrain from supporting extreme and radical parties.
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The risk of voting for populist radical-right parties depends on electoral context
In our study, we checked to see whether, when a populist radical-right party has a high possibility of winning seats in the legislature, deciding to vote for that party may be considered less risky, both electorally and socially. Electorally, it’s not a wasted vote if the party has a chance of winning. Socially, it isn’t seen as abnormal to support such a party that has won support from a large portion of the electorate.
To test this idea, we used all eight waves of the European Social Survey between 2002 and 2016. The ESS is conducted biennially with at least 1,500 respondents per country, covering 36 countries. We analyzed results from 14 Western European countries, including France. The surveys ask questions about individuals’ social, economic and political attitudes through face-to-face interviews, with randomly selected cross-sectional samples of new respondents in each round.
We measured what social scientists call “individual risk aversion” using a question that asked participants to what extent they like to take risks in life, on a scale of one to six. Consistent with earlier research, we found that women are, on average, more risk-averse than men. We also found that people higher on the risk-aversion scale were less likely to support populist radical-right parties.
We measured the level of electoral risk that voting for such a party might bring by examining the share of the national vote or number of seats a populist radical-right party won in the elections preceding the survey. Knowing how much that party succeeded (or didn’t) in the previous election gives voters a sense of a party’s viability and whether voting for that party is tantamount to throwing away one’s vote. As radical-right parties garner sufficient electoral support, voting for them becomes less risky.
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Consistent with this theory, we did find fewer gender differences in support of radical-right parties the more they succeeded in the elections preceding the survey. But when these parties did not make it into parliament in the previous election, the gender gap in the vote supporting them was larger, with men supporting the risky parties much more than women.
What does this mean for Le Pen and for European politics more broadly?
Le Pen’s performance in the first-round vote shows significant support from women. According to Harris polls, issued every week or so, women report that they would probably vote for Le Pen at higher numbers than men. As would be consistent with our argument, the gender gap for the newest populist candidate, Éric Zemmour, was in the opposite direction; more men than women reported that they were likely to vote for him. However, voting for Le Pen, a well-established candidate, is considered less risky, so more women reported they were likely to vote for her. Indeed, Zemmour’s candidacy helped Le Pen to present herself as being less extreme than before. In addition, if a new female extremist enters the game, our research suggests that women would avoid voting for her as much as they said they would avoid Zemmour.
Both creation of and support for the radical-right populist parties that have surged across Europe over the past 20 years have been largely male-dominated. These parties were generally led by and supported by men. But this pattern is changing, as the 2022 French elections show. We expect the gender gap in the vote for populist radical-right parties to narrow as the populist radical right goes mainstream, a process underway in Western countries.
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Odelia Oshri (@OshriOdelia) is assistant professor in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Liran Harsgor (@LiranHarsgor) is assistant professor in political science at the University of Haifa.
Reut Itzkovitch-Malka is assistant professor in sociology, political science and communication at the Open University of Israel.
Or Tuttnauer (@ortutt) is Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the University of Mannheim.
