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.)

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Arguably the hard right foreign policies of the US from the last 10-20 years are responsible for a lot of the migrant waves Europeans are fearing.

    That’s not what you said. The conflicts from the last 10-20 years are rooted in colonialism, the break up of the Ottoman empire, and the rise of single resource economies. The US is certainly the leading imperial power right now, but they didn’t set this stage.

    • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Sure, but why stop in the 1600s? Let’s go all the way back to the agricultural revolution. I blame Sumer.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        We should never have started planting food. It was all down hill from there. Big Sumer ruined everything!

        • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          "The story so far:

          In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move"