As we showed earlier, there is a precedent for such behavior. In 2016, Austrian conservatives backed Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen to prevent the election of far-right radical Norbert Hofer. And in 2017, defeated French conservative candidate François Fillon called on his partisans to vote for center-left candidate Emmanuel Macron to keep far-right candidate Marine Le Pen out of power. In both these cases, right-wing politicians endorsed ideological rivals—angering much of the party base but redirecting substantial numbers of their voters to keep extremists out of power.
