Predicting the Rise of EU Right-Wing Populism in Response to Unbalanced Immigration

Figure 2

Immigration affects the support for right-wing populism II. (a) An unprecedented inflow of immigrants into Austria coincided with a steady increase in the fraction of RW populist voters. A solitary black dot represents the results of Austrian presidential election in May 2016 in which an RW populist candidate secured almost 50% of votes. This election shows that even after the record immigrant inflow at the end of 2015 had subsided, a decreasing trend in the number of immigrants that enter Austria did not automatically translate into lower support for the RW populist political option, that is, RW populism seems to be more than just a craze. (b) In Germany, the increasing inflow of immigrants (monthly data [34, 35]) rather clearly coincided with the increasing support for an RW populist party. (c) A significant regression emerges when the German case is presented as a scatter plot between the inflow of immigrants and the percentage of far-right voters.

(a)

(b)

(c)