Copying the far right doesn’t help mainstream parties. But it can boost the far right | Werner Krause, Denis Cohen and Tarik Abou-Chadi

Does fighting on the radical right's turf help to steal its voters? Our research suggests it doesn't

Across Europe, radical-right parties remain on the rise. In France, Marine Le Pen is again in the runoff for the French presidency against Emmanuel Macron. This time, polls suggest a much closer race than in the 2017 election. Just over a week ago, Viktor Orban's populist nationalist Fidesz party won a landslide in Hungary's parliamentary elections.

Parties of the far right not only have realistic chances of entering and leading governments in many countries, their success continues to spread across the entire continent. Even Spain and Portugal, long considered exceptional because of the absence of radical-right forces, have recently seen the emergence, respectively, of Vox and Chega.

Werner Krause is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna; Denis Cohen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research; Tarik Abou-Chadi is associate professor of European politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford