Does Right-Wing Violence Affect Public Support for Radical Right Parties? Evidence from Germany

Abstract

This article examines whether citizens’ political preferences toward radical right parties (RRPs) change after right-wing extremist violent attacks. It investigates this question in two ways. First, it presents a time-series study on public support for the RRP Alternative for Germany (AfD) between 2013 and 2019. Second, the article employs a quasi-experimental research design to examine the effect of a right-wing terrorist attack on citizens’ attitudes toward immigrants. Both studies indicate that public support for the AfD and its programmatic core positions increased after right-wing extremist attacks. Subsequent analyses suggest that former voters of the mainstream right, in particular, drive this effect. These findings shed light on the determinants of radical right party support, contributing to the long-standing debate on the consequences of political violence.

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“…While these two papers find left-wing shifts towards rioters who are clearly identified as lower income or ethnic minorities, there is also some evidence of right-wing shifts in response to violence by radical right supporters. The clearest contemporary example of this is the study by Krause and Matsunaga (2023) of the effect of extreme right violence in Germany following the so-called "refugee crisis" in Europe in 2015. Instead of a spatial location effect, Krause and Matsunga leverage the timing of opinion polls surveys in Germany relative to a series of extreme right violent acts, such as attacks on asylum seekers and the murder of the centre-right politician Walter Lübcke, to identify the effect of the violence on support for the radical right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.…”

“…This effects seems to be driven mainly by the radicalization of opinion amongst people who agree with the aims of the perpetrators of the violence. For example, Krause and Matsunaga (2023) find that extreme right violence in Germany led to increased public support for the radical right Alternative for Germany between 2013 and 2019. On the opposite political side, Enos, Kaufman, and Sands (2019) find that the 1992 Los Angeles riots led voters to shift in a more liberal direction.…”