Sexism and the Far‐Right Vote: The Individual Dynamics of Gender Backlash

This article contends that sexism plays a fundamental role in the electoral rise of the far right, both as a predisposition and as a changing attitude. Using panel data from Spain, we show that modern sexism is indeed among the most important attitudinal predictors of voting for the far‐right party Vox. The results also show that internal individual changes in levels of modern sexism impact far‐right voting. Backlash attitudinal change, defined as increases in sexism occurring in a context of feminist momentum, contributed significantly to the recent emergence of the radical right. Our findings indicate that sexism is not a crystalized attitude but rather susceptible to showing short‐term changes with important political consequences. This highlights the importance of understudied context‐dependent individual dynamics of gender backlash in far‐right voting.