Identity crisis on the right: This is how moderate voters are becoming radicalized.

BarcelonaThe rise of the far right is putting European conservatives on the ropes across Europe. In France, the National Regroupment is gaining ground on the Macronists, while Giorgia Meloni governs Italy and manages to avoid the cordon sanitaire of socialists and conservatives in Europe. In Germany, the CDU is holding out by applying the veto to the far right, but the Alternative for Germany gain muscle in the territory with the support of Donald Trump on the other side of the Atlantic. In Spain, the PP (People's Party) made a pact with Vox to come to power, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso achieved absolute majorities whose discourse is close to some of the positions of Santiago Abascal's party. In Catalonia, some are already accusing Junts of doing the same with the Catalan Alliance to prevent a loss of votes to Sílvia Orriols' party in the upcoming elections. as the polls indicateAcross Europe, then, the traditional right is seeing anti-establishment parties challenge them for pockets of the electorate they have taken for granted for many years. Is the moderate right-wing voter a political animal in danger of extinction?

"The center-right is immersed in an identity crisis. The prescriptions and vision of the future they championed have failed," explains UAB contemporary history professor Steven Forti. This disorientation is aggravated by the context of global political instability and the profound technological changes that are transforming Western societies, to which they are unable to offer a response. Far-right parties are doing so, but from a "simplistic" perspective and without addressing the wear and tear of having governed. "The crisis of the center-right is not one of votes, but of a political project," Forti clarifies. The results of the 2024 European elections make this clear: the Popular Party remains the leading force in the European Parliament, with 188 of 720 seats. This, however, is a "fictitious" hegemony, the historian maintains, because parties like the Spanish People's Party (PP) or the Slovenian Party (supporting Viktor Orbán) are engaged in a process of "ultra-rightist drift." In contrast, far-right forces grew by only 2% in the last European elections (they now represent 25% of the chamber).

What's behind this shift? The verdict of the experts consulted by ARA is clear: there's no single cause that explains it, because the situation in each country is different, but there are some global trends. Salvador Martí Puig, professor of political science at the University of Girona (UdG), points to two: the "social decline" that has been brewing over the last 15 years and the "lamination of society," with a triumph of individualistic discourses on social media that is detrimental to associations and spaces for political socialization. The latter includes political parties, which have seen their membership numbers plummet.

A broken generational pact

This cocktail shattered the consensus on which Social Democrats and Christian Democrats had built the European project: "Young people are living worse than their parents and they perceive that a pact has been broken," Martí summarizes. The far right has used a peculiar force to gain momentum: this young, precarious, male-dominated voter, and elites who have known how to exploit them. This "type" alliancesandwich", as the expert describes it, is seen in the bases of Reagrupament Nacional, but also in the United States and Latin America, where Bolsonaro, Bukele or Milei have become symbols of this "neoreactionary" discourse. Martí maintains that the space of the moderate center-right exists and that it also has the voter, especially among the middle class, but especially among the middle class" within ten years in Europe.

Forti, coordinator of the book. Myths and tales of the extreme right, points to two other possible causes that explain the upward trend of the far right: first, the reaction of a segment of the conservative vote to advances in the feminist or LGBTI agenda; and second, the crisis of confidence in liberal democracy, with corruption cases that have also affected these parties (such as the Gürtel case in Spain). But the paths that can push a moderate voter toward radicalization are as diverse as each case: there are studies that show that in Milan, for example, the implementation of restrictions on car circulation has generated a reactionary response, emphasizes political scientist and UPF professor Toni Rodon.

The evil of discontent

Discontent or dissatisfaction are also driving forces among "orphan voters," who feel that traditional parties fail to address their problems and who find in the far-right ballots a way to express this "punishment vote." This is how Rodon describes it, pointing out that part of the far-right vote also comes from abstention—as has happened, for example, with Se ha Acabado la Fiesta, Alvise's party. In this sense, both Rodon and most of the experts consulted emphasize that the 2008 crisis also caused a political upheaval following the 15-M elections and the emergence of forces like Podemos, but also Ciutadans. Just as the Social Democrats then saw strong competitors grow on their left, now the conservatives have one (or even two) on the right.

The emergence and expansion of these new parties is key to understanding the rise of political radicalism within the conservative space. "It's not a question of demand, but of supply. There will always be potential far-right voters, but a supply is necessary to mobilize them," argues Héctor Sánchez Margalef, senior researcher at CIDOB. By embracing far-right agendas, however, conservative parties fail to stem the tide, because voters tend to prefer "the original in the copy," he points out. When center-right parties in polarized societies have a choice, they choose the far right, unlike what happens in countries where "grand coalition" formulas have been implemented, such as Germany or Portugal. But this doesn't always benefit them electorally and, moreover, has secondary (and pernicious) effects on the perceptions of their electorate. The paradigmatic example of this is immigration, as explained by Gemma Pinyol, director of migration policies at Instrategies and associate professor at the UAB.

"Studies tell us that very few people vote on the immigration issue. They do say, however, that they change their position when their party changes," explains Pinyol, who emphasizes that the far right, but also those who buy into its framework, has ended up constructing immigration as a "problem." Of the new wave of extremism in Europe, she notes the "nativist" profile, a position that hasn't resurfaced since before the Second World War but is also not new. For Pinyol, also an associate researcher at GRITIM-UPF, the great problem of Christian Democracy is that it doesn't know how to differentiate itself from positions that make immigration the "scapegoat" for all problems, without offering any "realistic proposals." Nor, she maintains, are the Social Democrats capable of offering an alternative discourse, not even in places like the United Kingdom and Denmark, nor policies consistent with the values of solidarity and respect for human rights.