Attention to the far right
Studies on whether attention to immigration, or to the party, raises far-right support, and on which counter-messages have moved it.
hen the issues a far-right party campaigns on get more attention — or when the party itself is mentioned more — what happens to its support?
Boomgaarden & Vliegenthart (2007)
Dutch national newspaper coverage of immigration between 1990 and 2002, compared with the share of voters saying they would vote for an anti-immigrant party.
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The Dutch data are newspaper coverage and aggregate vote intention, so they cannot say which voters moved.
The result comes from national newspapers in one country. Whether it still holds now that the immigration conversation runs through social media is untested.
Sheets, Bos & Boomgaarden (2015)
A survey experiment on a representative Dutch sample testing whether a far-right party cue, alone or with an immigration cue, changed the odds of voting for that party.
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Klüver et al. (2026)
A German survey experiment with over 24,000 respondents and 170 messages, testing four ways mainstream parties might answer right-wing populists.
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Galasso et al. (2024)
An Italian field experiment that ran anti-populist video ads across 200 municipalities during the 2020 referendum, then followed the same places into the 2022 national election.
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The Italian backfire was measured two years on. Whether it is a two-year story specifically, or would show up sooner with a different message, is not known.
Ratcliff (2026)
An Australian survey experiment with nine message arms on 6,008 voters, testing what moves and what fails to move willingness to vote for One Nation.
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The Australian experiment is a seminar presentation, not a published paper. There are no effect sizes to look at, only the direction of each arm.
Nothing here says what a counter-message has to be about for it to land. Why the Trump link worked where competence and record did not is unexplained.
Synthesis
Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart read their result as cultural threat, not economic threat. The Italian and Australian results arrive at the opposite reading of what does the work.
Only the Italian study is a real campaign in real places. The German and Australian ones are people answering a survey.
None of this is Australian field data. Whether any of it transfers to a Victorian campaign is untested.
Linked notes
/notes/correcting-the-record
/notes/the-front-republicain
/notes/vox-and-the-frame
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