Neighbourhood ethnic composition and voting for the radical right in the Netherlands. The role of perceived neighbourhood threat and interethnic neighbourhood contact

Abstract

Support for radical right parties has grown rapidly in many Western countries over the past few decades. In recent years, many studies have addressed the relationship between the presence of ethnic minorities in people's living environment and their support for a radical right party, but consensus is hard to find as to how ethnic minority density is related to support for the radical right, let alone why. In this contribution, we demonstrate that in The Netherlands, ethnic minority density is positively related to the likelihood to vote for the Party for Freedom. This is particularly the case when the size of the minority group exceeds 15 per cent of the total neighbourhood population. We could establish this relationship by using the Dutch 1Vandaag Opinion Panel data set, a unique large-scale, individual-level data set comprising 21,200 native Dutch respondents living in 3,068 different neighbourhoods. We enriched this data set with contextual information derived from Statistics Netherlands. The reason why ethnic minority density is linked to support for the radical right is that these residents see non-Western migrants as a threat for their neighbourhood. This is particularly true for residents who do not mingle with their non-coethnic neighbours.