How Attitudes on Gender Identity, Sexuality, and Core Populist Radical Right Values Combine in Diverging Ideological Constellations Among Populist Radical Right-Inclined Voters

Abstract

This article addresses three caveats in populist radical right (PRR) voter studies focusing on gender and sexuality: omission of potential voters, representing gender and sexuality as one undifferentiated category, and issue-specific rather than comparative analysis. We use a theory-grounded latent class analysis, based on the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study (2021), to identify voter profiles in terms of how nativism, populism, and gender identity and sexuality attitudes combine differently among citizens who are inclined to vote populist radical right. Empirically, we find distinct profiles in terms of populism, nativism and gender identity and sexuality attitudes: a small minority of gender-and-sexuality-conservatives and larger classes of more modern and moderate potential populist radical right voters; but all clearly nativist. Abstracting from the specific case of the Netherlands, we provide typological descriptions of populist radical right voters that are likely also relevant in other countries.