The Impact of Generational Change on Votes for the French Populist Radical Right
(2025) French Democracy in Distress. Challenges and Opportunities in French Politics — ISBN: [978-3-031-92212-1], p. 269-298, published
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- Two conflicting theories link support for right-wing populism to generational change. The first one sees the Millennials as the main drivers of a democratic deconsolidation in Western Europe and North America. The generations born since 1980 appear less engaged politically, attaching less importance to democracy and its institutions, and more open to alternative form of government. The second thesis analyzes support for authoritarian populism as a “cultural backlash” driven by the older generations, triggered by the post-War shift toward post-materialist values. As gender equality, sexual permissiveness and cultural diversity become the dominant norm, the older ones turn to populist leaders to restore the traditional social order. France appears as a good case to test these theories. The Rassemblement national (RN, previously Front national), one of the first and most successful of the Populist Radical Rights parties in Western Europe, reached a new apex in the 2022 presidential elections. Drawing from national surveys conducted after the 2022 presidential election, the chapter looks at attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities, gender and sexuality, law and order, and at the support for democracy and the RN. It shows that none of the two theories adequately explain the increasing support for the RN and that there is no generational polarization. Above all, the chapter reveals an intriguing paradox: while the younger cohorts are more tolerant and liberal on cultural issues, it is also the younger generations, not the older ones, who are the most likely to vote for the RN. The chapter finally argues that sampling issues, abstention, diversity, and high level of education among youth account for this paradox and for the shortcomings of the two theories tested.
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Druez, É., Durand, M., & Mayer, N. (2025). The Impact of Generational Change on Votes for the French Populist Radical Right. In Druez, É., Gonthier, F., Kelbel, C., Mayer, N., von Nostitz, FC., Tiberj, V. (eds) (ed.), French Democracy in Distress. Challenges and Opportunities in French Politics (p. p. 269-298). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-92213-8_11