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.)
Still in some countries, the far right’s popularity did not always translate to becoming favorites of the youth. In 2022, while Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy received votes from every age bracket, data suggested the young favored left-wing parties more.
German and Finnish data suggests the leftist Greens — which capitalized on the youth vote in the past — are now losing ground.
Young voters across Europe are veering toward newer parties, which include far-right platforms, whereas many long-established, centrist parties still rely on support from older voters, said Josse de Voogd, a Dutch researcher who has made electoral geography his specialty.
“AfD in Germany doesn’t even have to grow to become the largest, because [the Socialists] and the [Christian Democrats] will naturally shrink, and the young voters are scattered across all parties,” he said, referring to the far–right Alternative for Germany.
POLITICO took a closer look at the youth vote in five EU countries:
France
In France, the far-right National Rally led by 28-year-old rising star Jordan Bardella, can count on widespread sympathy among young folk.
In an Ifop poll in April, 32 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds said they’d vote for the National Rally if the election were held the following weekend.
Some 17 percent said they’d cast a vote for the far-left France Unbowed, making it a distant second. More centrist leftwing and rightwing parties, including President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance, trailed even further behind, with just 6 percent.
Bardella’s strong presence on TikTok might have something to do with it: Pollsters found that about one-third of young people said they rely on the app to follow the election campaign.
That’s not to say Bardella is well-liked across the board: The young MEP emerged from the survey as both the second-best liked, and the second most-disliked candidate among France’s youngest voters.
The survey results also don’t automatically translate into electoral success, as the researchers estimated just 30 percent of young people would end up casting a ballot.
Portugal
Portugal’s far-right Chega won 18 percent of the votes in the March general election.
But according to survey data, one in four 18 to 34-year-old voters cast a ballot for the party.
While Portugal’s oldest voters loyally backed the Socialist Party, young voters tend to lean more toward “new” parties — such as Chega, but also the Liberal Initiative or the greens — rather than well-established parties, researchers found.
The party had broader male backing, but researchers said it had also made strides among women.
Belgium
The anti-immigration and separatist Flemish Interest (Vlaams Belang) party can count on the sympathy of the Flanders’ youth vote — more particularly, that of young men.
Polls ahead of regional, national and EU elections in June suggest the party could get more than 25 percent of the Flemish vote.
But if Gen-Z men — up to 27 years old — were to decide, it would get even more.
Nearly 32 percent said that they were very likely to, at one point, vote for Flemish Interest. Only nine percent of women in that age bracket said the same.
Researchers found a similar, though less pronounced, divide among Millennials.
“Flemish Interest is very well aware of this, and explicitly targets young women in its campaign to adjust its image,” said Peter Van Aelst, a professor at the University of Antwerp. The party’s campaigns don’t feature “the boxing gloves of old, but rather a very feminine, soft image,” he said.
Germany
A “Youth in Germany” study found a shift in the favorite party of the country’s 14 to 29-year-olds, with 14.5 percent saying they’d vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany.
By far the largest group — 25 percent of respondents — were undecided.
In 2022, the Greens and the liberal Free Democratic Party were still young people’s parties of choice.
Like in Belgium, there’s a clear gender divide: Young women leaned left, young men tended to favor right-wing parties — and showed far broader support for Alternative for Germany. Women also reported being undecided more often than men.
Finland
Finnish researchers have drawn similar conclusions.
The anti-immigration right-wing Finns Party placed second in Finland’s 2023 general election with 20 percent of the vote. According to analysis of the results, it had been the most popular party in all but the oldest age bracket.
Voters older than 65 had, by and large, remained loyal to centrist parties such as the social democrats, the liberal-conservative KOK, and the liberal Center Party.
But the Finns Party was a favorite in other age brackets, performing miles ahead of other parties among younger men.
Like in Germany, researchers noted that young voters, young women in particular, far more than older ones, favored parties like the Left Alliance and the Greens, but that the Greens had lost ground since 2019.