Bypassing the Extremism Barrier: Female Leadership and Electoral Coalition Broadening in the Populist Radical Right

Populist radical-right (PRR) parties are defined by nativism, authoritarianism, and patriarchal values – yet a growing number are led by women. This presents a theoretical puzzle: can female leadership broaden electoral appeal when the leader’s identity contradicts the party’s core platform? This thesis examines whether female PRR leadership attenuates the deterrent effect of perceived extremism on vote choice, a mechanism in which voters who would otherwise reject a party as too extreme are drawn in by the candidate herself, overriding the party-level deterrent - what I term candidate-mediated bypassing. I examine this mechanism using Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) under Alice Weidel’s co-leadership as a case study, given that Weidel’s candidacy offers a near-ideal test of the bypassing argument: a visibly extreme party led by a candidate whose personal profile – openly gay, cosmopolitan, highly educated – diverges sharply from the party’s ideological base. Drawing on voter-flow data from the 2021 and 2025 Bundestag elections and individual-level survey data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), I test three claims: whether Weidel’s candidacy broadened the AfD’s electoral coalition, whether it narrowed its persistent gender gap, and whether favorable candidate evaluations attenuate the extremism barrier at the individual level. I find that the AfD was perceived as more extreme in 2025 than in 2021, ruling out party-level normalization. Yet, the AfD still attracted voters from structurally moderate source parties at higher rates than its 2021 baseline. Favorable evaluations of Weidel significantly attenuate the deterrent effect of extremism perceptions on vote likelihood, consistent with the bypassing argument. Most strikingly, the bypassing effect is strongest among former SPD supporters – the most ideologically distant group in the sample - suggesting that candidate appeal can bridge substantial ideological distance rather than merely consolidating AfD-adjacent voters. Paradoxically, the gender gap widened rather than narrowed, suggesting that feminization strategies operate differently at the individual and aggregate levels – a divergencethis thesis theorizes and explains