This paper examines whether external security threats reduce popular support for far-right parties, focusing on Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Existing scholarship suggests that such threats should weaken extremist parties by generating rally effects, shifting attention to foreign policy, and increasing demand for experienced leadership. Contrary to these expectations, descriptive trends show that far-right support in Western Europe increased following the invasion. We examine this question through two studies. First, we leverage an unexpected event during survey design using European Social Survey data and find no evidence that exposure to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reduced support for far-right parties. Second, we conduct a pre-registered survey experiment in Germany, which similarly shows that exposure to a hypothetical security threat does not decrease support for far-right parties. Instead, threats modestly increase support for mainstream center-right incumbents by heightening demand for competent leadership. Together, our findings suggest that support for far-right parties is more resilient to external threats than commonly assumed.
