Mapping Political Fandom: Male (Not Only Young) and Right-Leaning

This chapter examines the sociodemographic profiles of political fans across seven European countries: Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Drawing on descriptive analysis and multivariate logistic regression models, it investigates how gender, age, and educational attainment shape political fandom, conceptualised as an individualised mode of engagement rooted in parasocial interaction and ‘intimacy at a distance’. The empirical findings highlighted a consistent male overrepresentation alongside a U-shaped age distribution, with the highest levels of involvement observed among the youngest and oldest cohorts. Although educational qualifications demonstrate negligible predictive power, political fandom is strongly associated with high political interest and right-leaning ideological orientations, particularly among ‘strong fans’. The analysis suggests that, although this form of participation is typically mediated by digital devices and social media platforms (though the chapter on offline activities shows this is not exclusive to these channels), it challenges certain established barriers, most notably the ‘rich get richer’ hypothesis with respect to educational attainment, but tends to reproduce entrenched gender disparities. The chapter ultimately argues that political fandom constitutes a significant mechanism of polarisation, reshaping contemporary repertoires of citizenship and reconfiguring the vertical relationship between political leaders and the public within the broader framework of fandom democracy.