The Radical Right Gender Gap

In this article, the author argues that a gender gap exists in the vote for the radical right and that this gender gap can be explained using techniques drawn from the literature on mainstream gender gaps. The analysis emphasizes the impact of the immigration issue on the vote for the radical right. Logit and regression analysis are used to determine what can be explained by structural, situational, and political factors versus gender alone in France, Germany, and Austria. It is found that there is a gender gap, but it varies across the three cases; that attitudes toward political issues, particularly immigration, have a disproportionate impact on the probability of voting radical right but not on the gender gap specifically; and that there is a difference between men and women on the immigration issue, and blue-collar workers are more likely to be anti-immigrant than those in other sectors.