“500 Finnish emigrants dancing on the deck of s/s Urania, 1893” by The Maritime Museum of Finland is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

In recent decades, populist radical right-wing (PRR) political parties have seen increasing success in Europe. These parties generally oppose globalization and favor restrictions on immigration. Sometimes, they oppose certain aspects of liberal democracy. Examples include Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party, French politician Marine le Pen and the National Rally party, and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, whose party is called Brothers of Italy.

Given that immigration is a central issue for many of these groups, researchers have studied whether regions with more immigration are more likely to vote for PRR parties. The results have been mixed. In an article published last year in the American Journal of Political Science, a team of researchers based in Sweden, the US, and the UK took a different, but related approach. They asked: how do levels of emigration, the act of moving away from somewhere, affect support for PRR parties?

To answer this question, the authors undertook two different sets of analyses. First, they explored the connection between a place’s level of emigration and support for PRR parties. Across Europe, they found that subnational regions that had more emigration were also more likely to vote for PRR parties.regions that had more emigration were also more likely to vote for PRR parties.

Second, they performed a more in-depth analysis of precincts in Sweden where more detailed data was available. The Swedish case confirmed that more emigration leads to a higher percentage of votes for PRR parties.

According to the researchers, emigration has two impacts on PRR electoral fortunes. The first is that people who don’t move away tend to be different than the ones who moved, including in their political views. The second, more powerful impact is that emigration has effects on the community that cause remaining voters to become more populist. For instance, emigrants are more likely to be of prime working age, which can have a negative effect on the local economy. A general decrease in people’s quality of life can then be exploited by PRR politicians who blame other political parties for the community’s struggles.

This paper highlights the ways in which population shifts can have wide-ranging and often unanticipated social consequences–consequences that, in turn, can shape and reshape politics.