Mattia Zulianello Explores the Impact of Covid-19 Upon Popular Support for Populist Radical Right Parties Across Europe for Italy’s Domani
In his latest op-ed for Italian newspaper Domani (31/12/20) our Italy focused Research Fellow Mattia Zulianello uses recent polling from across Europe to show that since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, support for populist radical right parties has – in the main – tended to remain intact.
Mattia summarises his article explaining that:
The majority of populist radical right parties (PRR) declined in the polls (i.e. voting intentions) in the year Covid-19 hit (18 out of 26), as shown by the variation between January and December 2020. During the first wave, PRR parties in govt. registered a considerable rise at the polls in the most acute phases of the crisis. However, during the second wave of Covid-19 PRR incumbents lost ground at the polls. This is shown in particular by Fidesz in Hungary and PiS in Poland. The 8 (out of 26) PRR parties that grew at the polls by the end 2020 are all opposition forces. Among them, the top-performers have been Brothers of Italy (+5.7%), the New Right in Denmark (+5.1%) and the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands (+3.5%). Overall, 2020 has NOT been an annus horribilis for European PRRs. Despite the broader negative trend in terms of voting intentions, the PRR parties in the European Union still lead the polls in Italy, Poland, Hungary and they are 2nd in France and the Netherlands, 3rd in Spain and Sweden (as well as in Italy). The pandemic has NOT wiped out the populist radical right even in countries where it has only made its appearance in recent years, such as Portugal and Spain. Furthermore, in an increasing number of countries, the political market is characterised by the presence of multiple successful parties of the PRR, a phenomenon that generates complex interactions of cooperation and competition, as the Italian case (Salvini vs Meloni) suggests. The pandemic in 2020 hence suggests a substantial resilience of the populist radical right even in the context of an unprecedented global crisis. PRR parties are here to stay. The pandemic has not inflected a fatal blow to these parties: on the contrary, it provides further evidence of the consolidation of the populist radical right in European political systems.
The full article can be read here (in Italian and paywalled).