Green or Gender-Modern Nativists: Do They Exist and Do They Vote for Right-Wing Populist Parties?

Abstract

ABSTRACT A current focal point of right-wing populist (RWP) parties across Western societies has been anti-environmentalism and anti-feminism, entangled with their dominant anti-migrant agenda. This clustering of positions overlaps with the conceptual GAL-TAN (Green, Alternative, Liberalist – Traditional, Authoritarian, Nationalist) distinction in voter studies. Still, numerous voters might transcend this distinction, for instance adhering to femonationalism. By taking a feminist ground-up approach, we reveal how nativist, anti-feminist, and anti-environmentalist attitudes do (or do not) cluster across Western Europe. Our results show that approximately 30% of voters deviate from the GAL-TAN logic, with considerable clusters of citizens combining strong nativism with support for gender equality or moderate nativism with anti-feminism. Further, we estimate the support for RWP parties and show that nativism is core to supporting RWP elites, and anti-environmentalism can provide an additional vote bonus. However, our analysis reveals that the (anti-)feminist and nativist elements of people’s political ideology entail more complex entanglements: both anti-feminist nativist voters and femonationalist voters gravitate to RWP parties. These results imply that feminist quantitative studies are needed to lay bare the average-defying minority groups that can be mobilised to support RWP parties.