Europe is experiencing a dramatic political realignment with far-right parties gaining unprecedented momentum. In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) made a historic win by securing almost 44 percent of the vote in the Sachsen-Anhalt state elections in September 2026. AfD holds extreme nationalistic values built on narratives of Euroscepticism, hardline anti-immigration policies, traditional family roles, and restoration of diplomatic ties with Russia. Now it has grown into a major player that threatens Chancellor Merz’s centrist coalition.
A similar trajectory is seen in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Rally continues to consolidate its mainstream support, gaining roughly 40 percent of the votes in the second round of the 2022 French presidential election, the highest vote share achieved in the history of the party. Spain has also demonstrated the rapid growth of far-right parties. Sweden witnessed the entry of its far-right party, Sweden Democrats (SD), into parliament for the first time in 2010, and the rapid increase of its electoral support to 17.5 percent in the 2018 election, becoming the third-largest party in the country.
Traditionally, political scientists have identified the so-called “Radical Right Gender Gap” in far-right supporters, with men making up their primary voter base. This gap has been explained by gender positionality differences in labour markets, the varying salience of religion, and the spread of feminism. Recent elections across Europe, however, are indicating a shift in this dynamic.
According to Javier Carbonell, a Policy Analyst in the European Politics and Institutions Programme at the European Policy Centre in Brussels, young women are becoming polarized: while the majority are moving further left, a significant minority is still drawn toward the far-right in Europe. Whereas women’s support for far-right parties in the EU stood at slightly above 15 percent in 2018, it escalated to more than 20 percent in 2023. This indicates that Europe is observing a shrinking gender divide among voters.
This narrowing gender gap is largely due to top-down party strategies alongside shifting voter demographics. At the party level, populist far-right parties have strategically used rebranding to capture women voters. Nonna Mayer, a research professor at Sciences Po, explains two primary strategies: “Femonationalism” and “Gendered Normalization”. Femonationalism is a strategy that treats the topic of immigration as a deeply gendered domain, framing immigrants as potential threats endangering women and gay rights. Gendered normalization involves softening the extremist image of the party and stripping away aggressive, masculine rhetoric in order to make the party appear mainstream and modern by integrating women’s issues and female-tailored policies.
In France, Le Pen has actively adopted these strategies within the National Rally since 2011. She emphasized women’s right to abortion and women’s freedom in workplace environments, alongside support for LGBTQ rights. She also centered her presidential campaign on her female leadership, presenting herself as a “Femme d’État” (Stateswoman) while strictly rejecting Islamic identities. On August 30th, Marine Le Pen called for banning and penalizing the wearing of headscarves in public spaces, framing the move as a response to Islamist influences.
Beyond these top-down narratives, research at the voter level further complements these party-level strategies. According to a research paper, women voters display a distinct ideological profile from their male counterparts. While men’s votes are mainly tied to blue-collar occupations, women’s votes are predominantly concentrated in non-manual sectors in service, clerical, or sales roles. Far-right women voters do not necessarily subscribe to social conservatism, rather, they align with secularism, women’s divorce rights, reproductive freedom, and anti-immigrant stances, framed as a defense of modern European liberal values. This empirical research upholds the concepts of “Femonationalism” and “Gendered normalization”, confirming that far-right parties, to a remarkable extent, succeeded in drawing women into their political narratives.
The increase in women far-right voters represents a critical dimension in understanding complex political realignment in Europe. Gender dynamics in political alignment are yet undergoing a quiet, nuanced shift, but in fundamentally powerful ways. As Javier Carbonell notes, it is not that women voters are moving away from far-right parties, but that they are drawn toward them at a slower pace. Thus, to truly interpret the trajectory of the far-right in Europe, understanding tailored gender narratives that are steadily transforming Europe’s voting dynamics is required.
By: Dayeon Lee
November 11, 2026
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