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

Figure 3

Immigrant inflows and the popularity of right-wing populist movements—a nonlinear threshold. Shown is the annualized immigrant inflow into a given country (horizontal axis) as a percentage of that country’s population, as well as the corresponding percentage change in RW populist votes (vertical axis). In parentheses are the fractions of immigrants in the total population of the corresponding country. For a group of countries in which the annualized increase in the percentage of RW voters exceeded 2%, this increase is virtually independent of the inflow of immigrants. Such a result may reflect the EU’s political organization, that is, the lack of internal borders whereby if one country decides to accept immigrants, the decision may have repercussions for all the other member states. We also observe a threshold indicated by a dashed line at which the immigrant inflow into a given country is sufficiently high to invariably provoke an increase in the percentage of RW populist voters. In the model construction, this threshold suggests on an annual basis.