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.)

  • John_McMurray@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    6 months ago

    Yeah to anyone honest about what’s happening, it looks more like liberals fuck everything up, conservatives half ass repair stuff to some degree, liberals get back in and fuck it up even worse, conservatives make more half assed repairs but are unwilling to do what needs to be done because of liberal feel good fake altruism bullshit self serving sentiment. That’s when the nasty fuckers of the far right start getting support of the young.

    • 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.