Unlike Trump, Europe's far-right leaders haven't been damaged by the pandemic | Cas Mudde and Jakub Wondreys

A study of 31 countries shows other rightwing populists have not been exposed' by Covid-19 in the way the US president was

By now it is almost received wisdom that populists" (often used as a euphemism for the far right") have ignored the threat of Covid-19, that populists have been the electoral victims of the pandemic, and that the pandemic has exposed the political incompetence of populists in government.

Most of this speculation is based on one or two individual cases, most notably the US president, Donald Trump. But he is the exception rather than the rule. In a recent comparative study of far-right parties in the European Union, we found that none of those three assumptions holds up to scrutiny. In fact, there has been significant variety in far-right responses to the pandemic.