IMMIGRATION AND ELECTORAL SUPPORT FOR THE RADICAL RIGHT: EVIDENCE FROM DUTCH MUNICIPALITIES
Throughout Europe in recent years, a considerable number of ‘extreme-right’ parties, as they are most often referred to, have been gaining popularity and influencing the formation of public opinion. In France, the far-right ‘Front National’ party of Marine Le Pen scored its highest ever percentage of votes when it won through to the second round of the presidential elections in the spring of 2017. Shortly before that, at the national elections taking place in the Netherlands, the populist radical-right ‘Party for Freedom’ of Geert Wilders came second, increasing its previous number of seats in the parliament. Only a few months earlier, in summer of 2016, the right-wing populist ‘UK Independence Party’ had managed to play a major role in the ‘Brexit’ referendum by promoting itself as a nativist nationalist political movement.
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