It’s not just boomers, young people are voting far right too
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.)
A lot of people vote far-right out of despair. A "things are shit and can't get any worse" mentality.
The best defence against the right is government that actually works for the people.
Which is why the right work so hard to assure Gov. does not work.
And why they dismantle the systems they're tasked with protecting the moment they can.
This is exactly, literally true. The hard right folks in all branches of government are always throwing wrenches in the machine and then complaining that we have to get rid of the machine because it doesn't work.
Look! We gutted the public system. Clearly the privatized alternative must be the solution. We support privatization btw, so you need to vote for us!