Ahead of the European election, striking data shows where Gen Z and millennials’ allegiances lie.

Ahead of the European election, striking data shows where Gen Z and millennials’ allegiances lie.

Far-right parties are surging across Europe — and young voters are buying in.

Many parties with anti-immigrant agendas are even seeing support from first-time young voters in the upcoming June 6-9 European Parliament election.

In Belgium, France, Portugal, Germany and Finland, younger voters are backing anti-immigration and anti-establishment parties in numbers equal to and even exceeding older voters, analyses of recent elections and research of young people’s political preferences suggest.

In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ anti-immigration far-right Freedom Party won the 2023 election on a campaign that tied affordable housing to restrictions on immigration — a focus that struck a chord with young voters. In Portugal, too, the far-right party Chega, which means “enough” in Portuguese, drew on young people’s frustration with the housing crisis, among other quality-of-life concerns.

The analysis also points to a split: While young women often reported support for the Greens and other left-leaning parties, anti-migration parties did particularly well among young men. (Though there are some exceptions. See France, below, for example.)

  • tobogganablaze@lemmus.orgEnglish
    18·
    6 months ago

    This is not about conservatives, many of the countries listed here currently have or recently had conservative governments. The far right is a whole other level.

    • Asafum@feddit.nlEnglish
      15·
      6 months ago

      Imagine letting conservatives ruin your economy and thinking “I need a more extreme version of this.”

      Propaganda is a hell of a drug…

      • gerbler@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        6 months ago

        Conservatives make the world worse, they get booted out and liberals fail to fix it, they get booted out and then people look for a “strong man” who can cut through red tape and fix things once and for all.

        The far right embodies that third person. An extra bonus of a far right rule is the Overton window lurches so far to the right that the conservatives can pretend to be centrist and the liberals pretend to be left-wing.

          • yeah@feddit.ukEnglish
            2·
            6 months ago

            Whereas my perspective is that conservatives fuck things up then it swings left(ish) who can’t deliver recover enough before the conservatives get to fuck stuff up again while the media is heavily favouring the conservatives (fueling your narrative) and on the cycle goes. So the back and forth and left creeping to the middle (where they see success) leaves the far right as an alternative - and current rhetoric makes it less of an acceptable outlier.