Sexism and the Far-Right Vote: The Individual Dynamics of Gender Backlash

This article contends that sexism plays a fundamental role in the electoral rise of the far right, both as a predisposition and as a changing attitude. Using panel data from Spain we show that modern sexism is indeed among the most important attitudinal predictors of voting for the far-right party Vox. The results also show that within-individual changes in levels of modern sexism are consequential for far-right voting. We find that increases in sexism occurring in a context of feminist momentum (backlash attitudinal change) contributed significantly to the recent emergence of the radical right. Our findings indicate that sexism is not a crystalized attitude, but rather susceptible to showing short-term changes with important political consequences. This highlights the importance of understudied context-dependent individual dynamics of gender backlash in far-right voting. (2022-07-28)