Fighting for a Lost Cause? Availability of Populist Radical Right Voters for Established Parties. The Case of Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the availability of populist radical right voters for mainstream parties. Are there segments within the electorate of PRRPs that can be regained by (specific) established non-populist parties? Focusing on the German context, the paper analyzes the availability of AfD voters on the electoral market. We demonstrate that relatively low availability can be traced back to the voters' distance in issue positions, the strength of populist attitudes and the interplay of distance and populist attitudes. Strong populist attitudes decrease the role of issue proximity for the likelihood of winning (back) AfD voters. Accordingly, simple repositioning towards stricter immigration laws is not a substantively profitable strategy. Our results indicate that an AfD voter's willingness to vote for an established party varies across parties. Generally, the German populist radical right voter's availability for the mainstream parties are rather low, and we shall thus discuss the strategic implication of our findings.