VoxEU Video
Does the far-right benefit from terrorism?
Can acts of terror shift a country’s political landscape? Assessing both successful and failed terror attacks across German municipalities, Guido Friebel and Navid Sabet find that successful attacks lead to significant increases in the right-wing populist party’s vote share in state elections, despite the fact that most attacks were committed by right-wing nationalists against migrant communities. The study finds that media put emphasis on migration rather than on the right-wing activists to blame for the attacks. Transparency in who is committing terrorist attacks is important if we care about understanding and mitigating right-wing voting.
