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.)

  • Darkonion
    5•6 months ago

    Yep. This hardship has been coming at us for over 100years and, given the choice, most people will choose to have some faceless ‘other’ bear the problem than to share the hardship with the rest of the world. The climate crisis is real and this is just the tip of the mass migrations that will want to occur. If we don’t let them in, soon they will stop asking permission.

    Perhaps, with enough propaganda, we could get them so turned back on themselves and they will be too weak to attack us before they realize their true enemy. Western-style politics has proven it a potentially viable strategy.

    The right-wing promises you may be burdened, but others will be more burdened to make you feel like you are not the bottom. The left doesn’t understand, or is unwilling to accept, the emotional deficiency of people like the right.