The vote of young people for the extreme right grows in the five largest EU countries

The rise of the far right in the recent European elections is largely due to the support of young people. Those under 30 years of age in the five most populated countries in the EU and in which the most MEPs are elected – Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland – voted on 9-J in a greater proportion for far-right parties than in the previous ones. European elections, those held in 2019. Although support for left-wing formations in this age group resists in countries such as Spain and Italy, support for the ultras is clearly growing, according to electoral results and intention polls. vote by age groups. Experts speculate that the reasons range from discontent with governments to the large presence of extremist speeches on social networks. These messages also have a greater impact on men than on women.

The expansion of the ultras is evident in France. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) won one in three votes in the European elections, far ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s party, and its victory brought about an early start to the legislative elections. RN’s popularity is transversal by age, but the progress among young people is significant: in 2019, only 12% of French people between 18 and 25 years old voted for Le Pen; now this figure has reached 29%.

One of the formulas to win the French youth vote has been the use of social networks, especially TikTok. Jordan Bardella, the head of RN’s list for the Europeans, is quite a celebrity. The 28-year-old has more than 1.6 million followers and his videos have hundreds of thousands of views. But his notoriety hasn’t come from nowhere. “The extreme right parties knew how to capitalize on social networks to their advantage during the pandemic. Since then, they saw the potential that networks like TikTok have to reach young people,” explains Héctor Sánchez, researcher at the think tank CIDOB and expert in new political movements.

A similar strategy was used by the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD). Maximilian Krah, former leader of the party, who was expelled after downgrading the responsibility of the Nazi SS in the Holocaust, uploaded campaign videos giving “advice” to young people. Particularly to men. “One in three young Germans has never had a girlfriend. Are you one of them? Don’t watch porn, don’t vote for Los Verdes (…). Real men are on the extreme right. Real men are patriots. That’s the way to find a girlfriend! ”He said in a publication. The gender factor plays an important role for extremist groups: in the five countries analyzed, they are more inclined to vote for these parties than they are.

Despite the scandals that this formation was accumulating, one after another, the AfD emerged as the second force on 9-J, only behind the Christian Democrats (CDU) and slightly above the Social Democrats, the formation of the Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. For the first time, Germans could vote from the age of 16, a demand defended by the Greens party – a member of the Government coalition, along with the Liberals -, which received significant support from young people in 2019 (34 %). However, his bet failed miserably, as he was left with only 11% of young support. This age group leaned towards the CDU (17%) and the AfD (16%; that is 11 points more than in 2019), in addition to minority parties such as Volt and Die Partei.

Julian Hoerner, professor of political science at the University of Birmingham, believes that young voters take democracy for granted. “With all the crises we are going through, attention is lost to the fascist past in Germany,” he adds. For this expert, these voters are “disappointed” by the little progress in measures against climate change, which explains the fall of environmentalists. “It is very easy to lose voters like this and for a rather pessimistic perspective to be established, to which is added the general economic situation.” According to several surveys, immigration, inflation and the housing crisis have displaced the effects of climate change as the main concerns of Germans.

In Poland, the fifth EU country by population, young people have stopped supporting the ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) and are now leaning towards an option even more leaning to the right: Confederation, a party founded in 2018. The proposals Ultra-liberal economics of this Eurosceptic and populist formation increasingly attract young people. 30% supported them on 9-J, to the detriment of PiS (16.2%) and it is by far the winner in this age group. Five years ago, PiS garnered the highest number of support in all age groups. Among the youngest, it received 26.2%, about 10 points above what the Confederation obtained then.

The left holds on in southern Europe

The popularity of the far right among young people has its limits. Italy and Spain are an example of this. In Spain, Vox is growing strongly. 9-J received 15.7% of the young vote. In the absence of disaggregated data from the 2019 European elections, the result of the April general elections of that year serves as a reference to show the rise, in which the party only achieved 4.2% support in that age group. A new actor has joined this ultra boom in Spain: Alvise Pérez, founder of Se Acabó La Fiesta (SALF), who entered the European Parliament with three MEPs, with more followers among the group of those under 25 years of age.

Despite the increase in the vote towards these extremist formations, the left bloc showed its resistance. The PSOE has 20% of the vote in this age group, and if it is combined with Sumar and Podemos, the figure exceeds 30%.

A similar trend is recorded in Italy. Brothers of Italy, the party of the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, went from 4.9% to 17.3% of the votes among young voters (The League, of its coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, does show significant losses). During her campaign for the European elections, Meloni showed herself to be more moderate to appeal to the undecided and to get the European People’s Party to question the cordon sanitaire in order to reach an agreement with the ultras on specific issues in the next legislature (the Italian formation framed in the popular European parties, Forza Italia, already governs in coalition with Meloni’s party).

However, young Italian progressives showed their strength and led the Democratic Party – which is part of the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament – ​​to win among that group of voters. This training received 22.1% of young people’s support, to which we must also add 12.5% ​​of environmentalists.

For Héctor Sánchez, the results should be taken with a grain of salt: “Of course there are young people who vote with conviction for the extreme right, but there are many others who abstain, either due to disinterest or because they participate in politics in a different way.” However, he admits that the ultra parties have appropriated a discourse that the left always claimed, such as the reduction of the high cost of living. “Traditional forces, incapable of solving crises like this, pay the price,” he says.

Regarding the attractiveness of authoritarian models for part of this generation, Sánchez suggests that public policies must be implemented “to improve the image of democracy.” “There is no single vaccine against fascism because there will always be authoritarian pulses, what democracies can do is allow citizens to live a dignified life,” the expert proposes.

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