Are Mainstream Parties the Main Cause of the Rise of Populist and Far Right Parties?

Research on the rise of populism has largely overlooked the explanation that populists themselves advance: that they fill political representation gaps, defined as discrepancies between mainstream parties’ policies and the “popular will”.

In a widely discussed study, Laurenz Guenther and co-authors test this claim using an information-provision experiment conducted in the weeks leading up to the 2025 German federal election. Their estimates indicate that the AfD’s vote share would shrink by as much as 75% if the CDU adopted its immigration stance. These results suggest that the electoral success of populist parties is strongly linked to genuine policy preferences, rather than being driven solely by dissatisfaction with political elites or protest voting.