What is the relationship between shifts in public opinion and shifts in new far right populist parties’ right-left positioning within a European context?

Abstract

What Is The Relationship Between Shifts In Public Opinion And Shifts In New Far Right
Populist Parties? Previous research on mainstream parties proposes two theories:
‘Issue Ownership’ and ‘Riding The Wave’. The former suggests that individual parties
can be dominant over particular issues; the latter, that parties react to public opinion. It
has been supposed, but never statistically modelled, that populist parties will be Issue
Owning: they will not react strongly in shifts to the mean ideological placement of the
public. This study builds on previous research (Adams et al, 2004; Franzmann and
Kaiser 2006; Klüver and Spoon, 2014) by providing a focus on populist, new far right
parties in a European context. It offers a definition of a new far right populist party and
outlines current theory regarding ‘Issue Ownership’ and ‘Riding The Wave’. Through
regression analysis of fifteen parties from twelve European Union countries over
ninety-four instances between 1956-2015, the study concludes that populist parties are
affected by shifts in the mean ideological placement of voters albeit with this reaction
delayed by one election cycle.