The atomistic fallacy in political science and its implications for how we study the far right

At a time of rising support for the far-right, are we getting our research right? The increasing reliance on individual-level data has significantly improved research on who votes for the far-right and why. However, this progress has also led to the unintended neglect of the ‘atomistic fallacy’: the error of drawing conclusions about group-level outcomes solely from individual-level data. While the ‘ecological fallacy’ – using group-level data to infer individual-level behaviours – is widely recognised, the atomistic fallacy remains relatively underexplored in political science. In this technical brief we show how this can lead to misinterpretations about far-right party success and flawed policy recommendations about how to deal with it.