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.)
My young coworkers seem to believe that 250k refugees of which 100k got a house are the reason we have a housing shortage of well over 400k.
These kids are worse off than i am when it comes to housing, so how surprising is it that they vote far right.
One of them asked me: “so, you’re not racist?” Nah “shame, really”. Motherfucker forgot my family isn’t from here and i’ve often been treated like subhuman trash for being a foreigner despite being born here and speaking the language like it is my own (because it is).
They asked you if you’re not racist, as if it’s normal to be racist??
It’s sad to see how people get manipulated to the point that they can’t understand that even a natural population growth without immigration can cause a housing crisis, if we don’t build and maintain the houses. And immigrants come to work anyway, which provides a disproportionately high value to the economy compared to what most of them are paid.
It’s almost like if the most profit comes from building giant expensive houses then all you’re going to get is people building gigantic expensive houses and no “starter” homes…
Eh it’s more complicated than that because populations in Europe aren’t growing. It’s about urbanisation there’s plenty of houses available in villages you don’t want to live in, and I don’t mean that as an insult to the villages they’re more often than not perfectly quaint. Another factor is shifting standards, people by and large have much more space per person than in the past.
Hold up. Are you telling me that 100,000 refugees already own homes? Be right back, need to go vote conservative real quick.