Caught in the Crossfire. Electoral Spillover Effects of Accommodating the Radical Right

September 23, 2026·
Jasmin Rath
Lukas Hetzer
Lukas Hetzer
,
Jan Berz
,
L. Constantin Wurthmann
,
Sarah Wagner
· 0 min read
Link
Abstract
Mainstream parties face mounting pressure from radical right challengers. While existing research highlights the electoral costs of accommodating the radical right, we know less about how this decision affects potential coalition partners. When mainstream parties accommodate, this generates spillover effects for potential coalition parties that may be perceived as complicit in legitimising the radical right. We test this mechanism in Germany, exploiting an Unexpected Event during Survey Design: the CDU/CSU’s announcement of tougher migration policy and signaled openness to AfD support. We examine how initial supporters of the CDU/CSU’s potential coalition partners changed their vote intentions in response. We find that the event increased switching from the SPD to The Left by approximately three percentage points, with a similarly directed but statistically insignificant effect for the Greens. These results demonstrate that accommodating the radical right affects not only the accommodating party itself, but the broader coalition landscape in multi-party democracies.
Type
Publication
Party Politics
publications
Lukas Hetzer
Authors
Research Associate

I am a Research Associate at the Jacques Delors Centre at the Hertie School and part of the DFG-funded Research Unit “Reconfiguring Europe: Between Competence and Control”, where I work on the Coordination Project. I am also completing my PhD in Political Science at the University of Cologne.

My research focuses on European politics, political communication, public opinion, and crisis governance. I am particularly interested in how citizens, political actors, and institutions respond to political crises and broader political challenges, and how these responses shape European integration, political representation, and institutional change.

Methodologically, I work at the intersection of political science and computational social science. I use large-scale text data, computational text analysis, advanced survey designs, and (quasi-)experiments to study political discourse, public opinion, and political behaviour. I am also interested in building, linking, and analysing large-scale political datasets, particularly institutional text data from parliaments and EU institutions.

Before joining the Hertie School, I worked as a doctoral researcher at the University of Cologne and at GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, where I worked on election research and data-based knowledge transfer. I also held research assistant positions at the University of Amsterdam, Ghent University, and Humboldt University of Berlin. I hold an M.Sc. in Social Sciences Research from the University of Amsterdam and a B.Sc. in Social Sciences from Humboldt University of Berlin.

I also teach courses on quantitative methods, EU politics, and crisis politics.

Please feel free to explore my work and get in touch.

Authors