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.)

  • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
    1•6 months ago

    Oh, completely agree, but for the first two thirds of the 20th century, most Christians, like most people generally, were very pro science and took the bible as a book of lessons. It’s only in the last several decades that such a huge percentage of Christians equate science as antithetical to Christianity.

      • AFK BRB ChocolateEnglish
        1•6 months ago

        Solid point. Still, the prevailing attitude in the 40s and 50s was that science made things better, with perhaps a detour related to nuclear bombs/energy.

        • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2•6 months ago

          Yeah techno-utopianism. The thing about this stuff is any civilization is going to be diverse but what gets preserved is not going to be. Which gives us all a slanted flat view of history.

          You remember Asimov you don’t remember the Beatniks. So your view becomes that prior to say the 60s every single person had utter faith in science making the world better and the key to understanding the universe.

          Talk to any atheist about American free thought history and you get Thomas Jefferson, nothing, and then Madyln O’Hare.

          Ok…what about Ingersoll, or Rand, or Twain, Bierce, or Madison, or H.L. Mencken? They don’t exist. Everyone in that 200 year period had the same religions convictions exactly.