Angry white men are increasingly backing populist candidates in Europe and the US. But electoral data shows they will fall short of their goals without also winning the votes of women

Rightwing parties are on the rise – but they won't win power without women

Support for the rightwing anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has hit a record 13%, according to a poll by Insa for newspaper Bild, making it the third most popular political party in Germany.

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The party has averaged 10.5% in polls carried out this year, more than doubling its popularity since the 2013 general election, when it failed to pass the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.

Support for the AfD is driven primarily by men; only 37% of its supporters are women. No other German party has such a wide gender divide among its voters. The trend is even starker among AfD’s 20,120 members, 81% of whom are male.

The party’s support base also tends to be younger than the wider electorate. The average age of members is 47, making the AfD the second youngest party in Germany after the Pirate party. The AfD is most popular with men under 50, with an approval rating of 19%. The party’s lowest approval rating is among women over 50, with 7%.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Molly Flanagan and her daughter Grace wear handmade shirts in support of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Farmington, New Hampshire. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

These demographic trends are not unique to the AfD. Relatively new populist parties in Germany have recently been more popular with younger men, and similar trends are taking place elsewhere.

Further north, the popularity of the Sweden Democrats has continued to increase since they won a record 49 of the Riksdag’s 349 seats in 2014. The Swedish party has hit 20% in several polls, on a par with the country’s two main political forces, the Social Democrats and the Moderate party.

At the last election, the Sweden Democrats won the votes of 10% of men and 6% of women, according to exit poll data.

In France’s recent regional elections, the Front National (FN) won 34% of the male vote compared with 27% of the female vote. Voters over 65 were the only age group with which the FN did not come out on top, winning only 23% of the vote compared with 31.5%-35.7% among all other age groups.

The same trend is evident in presidential polls, which the FN leader, Marine Le Pen, currently leads. Nationwide support for Le Pen is about 27%, but this ranges from less than 20% among over-65s to more than 30% with 35- to 64-year-olds. The same polls show that support for the FN leader is 30% among men, but 24% among women.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Beppe Grillo, founder of Italy’s Five Star Movement.

Rightwing populist parties also lead the polls in the Netherlands and Austria, while in Italy support for the Five Star Movement (FSM) and the Lega Nord remains strong. Beppe Grillo’s populist FSM movement is the second largest political force in the country and the most popular among voters under 50.

Meanwhile in the US, support for the current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump is particularly strong among angry, frustrated, white, less-educated men in their 40s.

Comparing different countries is complicated. Every nation has a different political system and electoral dynamics. And in order to win an election, parties and candidates need to bring together a diverse coalition of voters. Ultimately, parties with a narrower and skewed appeal will always struggle to win elections.



There are two common challenges that many of these parties and candidates face.

First, older voters tend to be more influential in shaping electoral outcomes because a greater proportion of them tend to cast ballots compared with the rest of the population.

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Second, in western Europe, where figures are available – in Sweden, Germany and the UK – data shows there is no significant difference in turnout between men and women.

Indeed, in every US presidential election since 1980, the proportion of eligible female adults who voted has exceeded the proportion of eligible male adults, while the actual number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters in every election since 1964.

At the last German election, more than a third of voters were aged 60 and over – more than twice the number of those aged under 30.

If only men voted, the AfD would have entered parliament – it won 5.5% of votes among men in west Germany, and 7.1% among those in the east. But among women the party won only 3.4% and 4.7% of the vote respectively – and ultimately failed to enter parliament.



Young, angry white voters may be on the rise – but without the votes of women and older people they will always hit a ceiling.