A Demographic Emergency: How Are Population Threats Made Credible and Legitimate by Radical‐Right Voters?

This article examines how demographic threat narratives propagated by radical‐right parties are made credible in the accounts of radical‐right voters (RRVs) in rapidly diversifying non‐metropolitan towns. While radical‐right parties have cultivated and normalised demographic threat narratives, such as the “great replacement” theory, little is known about how RRVs reproduce these narratives and make them meaningful in their justifications. Drawing on 30 interviews with RRVs in the Dender region (Belgium), we address this gap by revealing three distinct but interrelated “grammars” through which demographic threat narratives are legitimised. Firstly, RRVs frame demographic replacement through a grammar of numbers, presenting it not as a matter of perception but as fact. Secondly, they legitimise these narratives through a grammar of “emergency,” dramatising the speed and scale of ethno‐racial diversification. Thirdly, they mobilise a politicised grammar that presents demographic change as a direct threat to the welfare state and democracy. By revealing these three interrelated grammars, our research contributes to the emerging field of population politics and shows how demographic threat narratives are not only disseminated by radical‐right parties, but also reproduced, normalised, and legitimised by their voters.