Discounting extreme positions: party normalization and support for the far right
Discounting extreme positions: party normalization and support for the far right was written by Laia Balcells, Sergi MartÃnez, and Ethan vanderWilden in 2024. It was published in Political Science Research and Methods.
The authors argue that the electorate distrusts extremist policy statements taken by a party that is not stigmatized as extremist. A party label that is associated with/expected to be extremist leads to the same statements being received as authentic. The crux of this discounting theory is that norms and stigmatization around a party label have meaningful impact on perceived extremism.
The authors test this theory using a survey about Vox. Respondents are experimentally treated with framing to suggest that Vox is either a stigmatized party (stigmatized cohort) or not (normalized cohort). Furthermore, respondents are randomized into three cohorts:
- Primed with a statement from a Vox deputy: "Today is the day to shout: the grass is green, boys have penises and girls vaginas, sex is binary, biology is real, gender ideology is a cancer"
Primed with statements by Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, about Franco's legacy (e.g. denying that he executed a coup)
- null/no priming
Outcome measure is a 0-100 scale ("feeling thermometer"). The outcome is regressed on indicators for exposure to stigmatization, exposure to either #1 or #2, and an interaction term. Regression model is fit separately for #1 and #2.
Authors find that exposure to statement #1 leads to decreased sympathy for the party in the normalized cohort, but not in the stigmatized cohort.
Authors find no movement following exposure to statement #2.
Implication is that the electorate can be persuaded to support extreme parties on some issues (esp. LGBTQ+ issues) but not others.
Reading Notes
I have read similar research that I think was more rigorous in the experiment design, especially in using a non-ideological statement as the null priming.