ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the determinants of the far right (FR) vote in the light of methodological choices made for its estimation. As the European FR vote shares continue to rise for a third decade in a row, accurate estimation of the factors that drive this increase is pivotal to our understanding of the economic, socio-cultural or political mechanics which underlie this process. The FR vote has been associated with three kinds of individual-level characteristics: demographic characteristics, citizens’ attitudes, and socio-economic conditions, such as unemployment at an individual level or crime rates in one’s area. The chapter places itself within the economic crisis/cultural backlash strand of the literature, using a meso-level analysis with regional data. It considers a variety of economic and immigration indices while controlling for political institutions without modelling them explicitly, as these remain constant within the time span of the sample and cannot be identified within panel framework.
