What Can Republicans Learn from the Success of European Conservatives in Attracting Young Voters?

 

One of the most significant and underreported political events of recent years is the changing nature of youth politics.  In places as diverse as India, Canada, Japan and the United States, younger voters are increasingly supportive of conservative- and libertarian-leaning political parties and candidates. 

The growing interest in conservatism among the young was evident in the June European Parliamentary elections.  Strong support and heavy turnout by younger voters enabled conservative parties to make large gains. 

This post covers three topics. First, what happened in the EU elections and what was the role of younger voters in the conservative surge?  Second, what do Europe’s conservative parties stand for?  And third, what can the Republican party in the United States draw from the European’s success in attracting young voters? 

What happened in June?

Conservative parties gained forty seats in the 720 members EU parliament.  Their gains aren’t large enough to take control.  However, conservative gains will give them greater ability to shape EU policy in a wide range of areas including economics, immigration, energy and foreign policy. 

The conservative showing was particularly strong in France and Germany, the two largest EU nations in terms of both population and economic output.  France’s National Rally gained seven and now controls the largest single block, 30 seats, out of that country’s 81-member delegation. Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble and The Environmentalists, a green party, were crushed.  In Germany, gains by the Alternative for Germany advanced that party from fourth to second place in terms of the number of seats controlled in the largest EU delegation. 

Instrumental in conservative gains were younger voters.  Political observer Yascha Mounk highlights the role of young voters in the success of conservative parties in the EU election.

“Remarkably, these developments are fueled, not slowed, by young voters. In Poland, a plurality of voters under the age of 30 supported the far-right Konfederacja. In France, the National Rally did a little better among voters under the age of 35 than it did in the population as a whole. In Germany, the young are now significantly more likely to vote for the far right than the old, with the AfD outpolling the Greens among those who are younger than 25.”

What do the European conservative parties stand for?

One of the main differences between politics in the European Union and the United States is that the EU’s proportional representation system allows many more parties to obtain seats in a legislative body that the first-past-the post system in the United States.  While the United States has two major parties, several dozen different parties are represented in the EU parliament.  Most of these parties have joined one of seven different coalitions though some act on their own. 

While conservative parties are often derided as “far right”, most Americans would find a lot to like in the platforms of Identity and Democracy or the European Conservative and Reformists, the largest conservative blocks, or the Alternative for Germany, the largest group of independents. 

One reason that conservatives are so often derided in the media is that EU politics are far to the left of those in the United States.  One measure of how far left EU politics are is that the “centrist” block in parliament consists of a coalition of establishment parties and self-described socialists.  Pundits rarely dispense the same opprobrium to parties of the left which include many former communists and anti-capitalist parties. 

Another is that news media in Europe have strong financial incentive to support ruling parties.  Unlike the United States, in which most media is privately owned and funded, state run media is common in Europe and private media organizations in most European countries receive substantial direct or indirect financial support from their governments.  Government ownership and funding provides an incentive for media to provide ruling parties with favorable coverage and disparage the opposition.

The European conservatives mostly share the following positions: 

• Conservative parties tend to view open border immigration as a security issue and oppose unfettered mass migration into the EU. 
• Conservative parties tend to be more supportive of the continued use of fossil fuels and oppose net-zero policies for carbon emissions.
• Conservative parties opposed the most extreme COVID lockdown measures.
• Conservative parties either oppose or have taken a more moderate stance toward the continuation of the NATO/Ukraine war with Russia.  

The views of the conservative parties on economics are more heterodox.  Writing in Intereconomics, Philip Ruthgrab provides a thoughtful summary of their range of positions of the conservative parties.

•  Conservative parties tend to be pro-business and seek to reduce the tax and regulatory burdens on their domestic private sectors. 
• Conservative parties generally want more national autonomy over economic decision making.  Party positions range between those seeking greater flexibility within the EU to those seeking outright exit as Britain voted to do in 2020. 
•       Some want EU member states to strictly adhere to EU fiscal rules on deficit spending while others want more fiscal flexibility.

In short, the range of opinion of the European conservatives on most issues is broadly similar to the positions of the Republican Party in the United States. 

What does this mean for Trump and the Republican Party? 

What did the European conservatives do to woo young voters, and can the Republican Party do the same in the United States?  Here are three takeaways from the EU elections for the GOP. 

1. Don’t back down when attacked. 

Europe’s conservative parties have not backed down from attacks from establishment politicians and the elite media. 

Europe’s conservative parties have also been subject to political persecutions like those waged by the Democrats against Donald Trump.  Germany’s AfD has been subject to ongoing harassment by the security state.  Establishment politicians in Germany have gone so far as to suggest banning the AfD, Germany’s second largest political party. 

The attacks on conservative parties have been ineffective in part due to the unpopularity of the establishment parties.  Some 70 percent of Germans and two-thirds of the French disapprove of the performance of their current governments.

Rhetorical attacks and lawfare of the establishment elites are seen by many young people as an attempt to silence their critics and deflect from the failures of the governing parties.  As the 25-year-old Bence Szabó from Hungary told the BBC,   “Everything coming from the right is being demonized, but we can actually solve the issues that the left tried to solve - and failed.”

Harassment and persecution of political opponents is decidedly undemocratic and authoritarian.  It makes the EU look like a banana republic writ large, albeit with espresso rather than coffee. 

2. Understand the concerns of the young  

Conservative parties also emphasized issues that have a major impact on the economic and physical well-being of young people.  These include inflation, crime, the COVID lockdowns, and the high cost of housing. 

Basic economic concerns were a motivating factor for Lazar Potrebic, a 25-year-old from Serbia. He told the BBC “We are not extremists. We are just angry. We feel like our needs are not being met. People our age are taking really important life steps. We're getting our first jobs, thinking about starting a family…but if you look around Europe, rent prices are going through the roof - and it’s hard to get work.”

Young Europeans are particularly concerned with two issues where the conservatives sharply differ with the establishment parties and the parties of the left: mass immigration and the war in Ukraine. 

One is immigration.  Young people feel the effects of Europe’s open borders policies more acutely than the old.  In a widely circulated post, Boris Palmer, mayor of the city of Tübingen in Germany, explains why:

“[young Germans] experience what irregular migration means on a daily basis,” Palmer wrote on Facebook on Monday.  “Above all, the young men who have arrived alone are changing the living environment of young people. In the park, in the club, on the street, on the bus, at the train station, in the schoolyard.” 

The war in Ukraine also weighed heavily on the minds of young Europeans who don’t want their nation or themselves to be dragged into another world war. In early 2022, the war in Ukraine replaced climate as the top concern of young Germans. Since then, young Germans have been in what some observers have termed a “permanent crisis mode.” The AfD’s Maximilian Krah put the war in terms young people can understand in a TikTok video:

"The war in Ukraine is not your war. Zelenskyy is not your president. … But this is costing you money and you are running the risk that Germany gets dragged into this war, otherwise you will have to go and fight on the eastern front where your grandfather's brothers and cousins lost their lives…",

In contrast to the AfD, Germany’s Green party has been the most enthusiastic supporter greater escalation of the war with Russia.

3. Harness the power of social media.

Young people are more likely than the old to get their information from social media. Conservative gains among younger voters in part to skillful use of social media by conservative parties. 

In contrast to Europe, the Republican party and Republican politicians in the United States lag far behind the Democrats in the use of social media to connect with voters.  there are some exceptions, the most noteworthy of which is Donald Trump. 

Social media allows political figures to sweep aside gatekeepers in the media and communicate directly with voters.  Young people appreciate the frankness of direct connections. 

The German news outlet Deutsche Weil characterized the conservative Alternative for Germany as the TikTok Party.  “The AfD reaches as many young people in Germany on TikTok as all the other parties combined. Traditional parties in Germany have so far done little to counter the AfD and its modern social media strategy.”

The same is true of France’s National Rally whose president, Jordan Bardella, is just 28 years old.  Bardella’s TikTok channel is filled with clips of him speaking directly to viewers, or at rallies and debates, as well as doing ordinary things like enjoying a chocolate or having a glass of wine.  It is working.  Bardella has 1.7 million followers and his videos have garnered over 40 million likes, 5 million more than the TikTok channel of President of France. 

The Hill: Why Biden is losing young Democrats like me

 Jeremy Etelson writes in The Hill why young Democrats are abandoning Biden.  Etelson is a former College Democrats chapter president and campaign staffer for Democrats.  

He explains why young voters including young Democrats like him are walking away from Joe Biden:

Biden is currently sitting on top of a seismic shift in the political parties’ voting coalitions. His average approval rating under 38 percent unfortunately is historically low for a president at this time in a first term. In 2020, Biden won young voters by 25 points.

Now disapproval of Biden is widespread among young voters, with him losing 18–29 year-olds and all under-45 voters when polled against all general election candidates. The dissent is not baseless, and not all young dissenters are doing so because of American support for Israel’s war against Hamas. Beyond Biden’s personal cognitive challenges, his administration’s policies are having indefensible consequences.

The United States is now entrenched in numerous international conflicts, each of which is increasingly dangerous and more complicated than a good-versus-evil narrative. Biden is largely responsible for escalating the Russia-Ukraine war, funding Ukraine through their incremental defeat while ignoring diplomatic negotiation and ceasefire offers. Biden has also allowed the funding of Iran throughout their proxy war against American and our Middle East allies. Meanwhile, North Korea has abandoned the decades-long reconciliation process with South Korea, following our escalation of multilateral military exercises in the region. Nuclear world war is now more probable than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

At home, the future looks dire for middle-class and low-income Americans. Most people worry about how we’ll deal with this historic inflation and the mounting federal debt. Rent prices are still above pre-pandemic levels, and half of all Americans now spend more than one third of their income on rent. Homelessness also spiked from 2022 to 2023 to the highest level since 2006. Each of these issues is even more alarming when considering this year’s expansion of BRICS, an informal coalition of emerging nations, and their increasing movement away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.  

In the meantime, an imminent national security risk has been generated by the border crisis. U.S. Customs and Border Protection have encountered at least 8.1 million people unlawfully crossing the southwest border since 2021, which is all in addition to the estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants who were already in the country when Biden took office.

Biden's policies have been a disaster for young Americans.  

Biden's massive spending programs, the skyrocketing debt, his anti-growth economic policies and his foreign wars are going to burden young Americans for decades to come.  

Donald Trump and the 2024 Youth Vote

Young Americans are warming to the idea of a second Trump presidency.  Trump in 2024 is more popular with younger voters than ever.

This article examines the political preferences of young Americans as reflected in the Youth Poll conducted by The Institute of Politics at Harvard University.  Harvard’s Youth Poll provides a high-quality picture of the views of young Americans.  The poll has been conducted every Spring and Fall since 2003 and many questions repeat between waves.  Respondents are limited to Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.  Sample sizes are larger than the typical 500-1000 respondents in the typical political opinion poll.  The margin of error in the Harvard Youth Poll is 3 percent or less.  

The tables below contain the results of Harvard Polls taken in the Spring of each election year.  The fieldwork dates and the sample sizes appear in a table at the end of this note.

Youth Poll results show that young Americans are much more likely in 2024 to plan to cast a vote for Donald Trump than they were at the same point in the 2016 election and marginally more likely  than in 2020.  The eight point difference in Trump support between 2016 and 2024 is statistically significant at the 95 percent level.      

In contrast, support for Biden has collapsed.  The share of young adults planning to vote for Joe Biden in November is 14 percentage points lower in 2024 than in 2020.  Biden is now just 7 points ahead of Trump (38 percent to 31 percent) compared to 22 points at the same time in 2020.  

A larger share of young Americans are undecided in 2024 than at the same point in the 2016 or 2020 election cycles.  The growth of undecideds almost exactly matches the decline in support for Biden.  The high share of undecided young adults presents a huge opportunity for Donald Trump and the Republicans.  In 2024, 41 million members of Gen Z (ages 18 to 27) will be eligible to vote.  The ability to attract young voters to the Republican ticket over the next six months could well make the difference to the outcome of the coming election. 

Young Trump supporters are much more enthusiastic about their candidate than young Biden supporters.  According to the Harvard Youth Poll, 68 percent of young Trump supporters are enthusiastic about their candidate, an increase of 17 percentage points since 2020.  

Enthusiasm for Biden has collapsed since 2020.  Just over two in five young Biden supporters–42 percent–are enthusiastic about their candidate, a decline of 17 percentage points since 2020.  

Other results in the 2024 Harvard Poll suggests that it will be difficult for Biden to close the enthusiasm gap.  For one, a majority of young adults–56 percent–tell Harvard that they don’t follow politics closely.  Second, young people are overwhelmingly negative about the current direction of the country.  In the 2024 poll, just 9 percent saw the United States as headed in the right direction.  Third, Biden’s student debt bailout plans are of interest to just a small sliver of the young electorate.  Just 26 percent of young adults overall consider student debt relief an important issue.  Results are little different among independents (26 percent important) and young adults in battleground states (27 percent important).  Fourth, unanticipated events over the next six months are unlikely to rally young voters to Biden.  Just 26 percent expressed confidence in the 2024 survey regarding Biden’s ability to lead in a crisis.  

Lack of enthusiasm for Biden and the high share of young adults that are undecided presents an enormous opportunity for Donald Trump and other Republicans.  

Should Trump and Republican candidates make an effort to present solutions to the top concerns of young Americans –inflation, jobs, and the high cost of living–in terms that resonate with them, they could easily find enough votes to win the Presidency and one or both houses of Congress.    

Republicans should not ignore the 40 million members of Gen Z who will be eligible to vote in 2024, about half of whom will be eligible to vote for the first time.  Despite the growing youth support for Donald Trump, Republicans have done little to connect to this vital demographic group.  A good start would be to document exactly how young Americans would benefit from the Republican platform and economic agenda.          

Intergenerational Progress: Stagnant or Just Slowing Down?

 

Parents want their children to prosper.  However, there’s an increasing sense that young Americans today are not as financially well-off as previous generations were in the same stage of life.  Whether Americans are continuing to progress from generation to generation has become the subject of a growing literature in economics and other social sciences.    

Research by Chetty (2014, 2017) found that intergenerational progress had largely stopped, that inflation-adjusted earnings of the typical (median) young American is no higher than that of his or her parents at the same age.  This conclusion has been challenged by Twenge (2023) and others who argue that young people today are materially better off than their parents.

The most recent high-quality study to take a crack at this question is Kevin Corinth (AEI) and Jeff Larrimore’s (Federal Reserve Board) 2024 paper.  Their study draws on data from the Current Population Survey to measure the income of couples and households over the sixty-year period from 1964 to 2023.  The focus is on adults in their prime earning years (ages 36 to 40). 

Economies and societies are dynamic.  Studies of economic and social change over time always entail difficulties as researchers try to identify the factors driving observed changes: labor force participation, education, social policy, etc.  The authors don’t try to offer a definitive explanation of the factors driving changes in income between generations.  Rather, they present several sensitivity tests which invite readers to be introspective and to sort it out on their own.  This contributes to the enjoyment of the paper.   

Corinth and Larrimore’s results are in a middle ground between Chetty and Twenge.  Corinth and Lattimore find that the rate of income growth between generations has slowed down but, unlike Chetty, progress has not stopped entirely.  Every generation is doing better than the preceding one.  However, the largest gains have accrued to those at the top of the income distribution and the highly educated.  This is consistent with previous work that documents the growth of income inequality in American society. 

Millennials have often been characterized as an unlucky generation having experienced two deep economic downturns in early adulthood.  However, Corinth and Larrimore find that Gen X is the unluckiest generation.  Gen X median income growth is the lowest of any generation, less than 10 percent in terms of market income.  By contrast, Millennial income growth is several percentage points higher though still in the low teens.  Figure 2 from their paper illustrates.  Note that the difference in earnings at each age is growing smaller with each succeeding generation

For me, the most interesting aspect of their work concerned the difference in income growth when measured in terms of market income versus a post-tax, post-transfer basis.  Gen X and the Millennials income growth is several points higher when measured on a post-tax, post-transfer basis.  Silent and Boomer income growth was not.  One can speculate that this is due to the enactment of fiscal policies over the last two decades that emphasize tax cuts along with increased social spending all of which are financed through government borrowing.  Deterioration in America’s fiscal position is going to make it more difficult for future generations to enjoy increases in purchasing power due to tax cuts and growth in transfer spending. 

The authors briefly touch on the economic condition of Gen Zers in their study.  Gen Z is too young for their focal age range (36-40).  The oldest Gen Z in 2023 was 27 years of age.  However, their study shows the rise in dependency on parental support in each succeeding generation (as measured by the proportion of members dependent on parents for 50 percent or more of their income).  The authors find that parental support is the only reason that younger Millennials (30 and below) had higher incomes than Gen Xers.  That is, market incomes for those 30 and under have been stagnant which contributes to the perception that intergenerational progress has stalled.  In this regard, their findings are similar to Chetty’s. 

Young Germans Shifting to the Conservative Parties

 

A new survey shows a growing affection for conservative parties among young Germans.  Like young Americans who increasingly find a second Trump presidency more attractive than four more years of the failures of Joe Biden, young Germans are finding a lot to like in the economic program and immigration platform of the three major right-of-center parties in Germany. 

The conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the most popular of Germany’s multiple political parties among German’s between 14 and 29 with 22 percent support according to the findings of the 2024 Jugend in Deutschland a survey. 

The AfD is the closest thing in Germany to the MAGA wing of the Republican Party in the United States.  The AfD’s economic program calls for deregulation and less state control of industry.  The AfD seeks a negotiated solution to the war in Ukraine.  And the AfD opposes Germany’s open borders immigration policies. 

The second most popular party among young Germans according to Jugend in Deutschland is the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) with 20 percent support.  The CDU/CSU most closely resembles the establishment Republicans in the United States. 

The pro-business Free Democratic party get 8 percent support among young Germans. 

In total, 50 percent of young Germans support the three pro-economic freedom parties. 

In contrast, only 35 percent of young Germans support the three parties of the left on economic policy.  The Greens have 18 percent support, the Socialists 12 percent and the former communists 5 percent. 

Young Germans are drawn to conservative parties because of their messages on economic policies and immigration according to Klaus Hurrelmann, a Professor of Public Health and Education at the Hertie School in Berlin, who was interviewed by the European Conservative. 

“The assumption that young people are left-wing is wrong. We can speak of a clear shift to the right among the young population. … The AfD has clearly succeeded in presenting itself as a protest party for the traffic lights and as a problem-solver for current concerns.”

Among the chief concerns for young people is not climate change, LGBTQ rights, or gender ideology, as the mainstream globalist press might have it, but rising costs and a lower standard of living due to inflation (65%), the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East (60%), and overpriced and scarce housing (54%).

Young Germans turned out heavily for freedom-oriented political parties in the previous German election in response to the COVID lockdowns and the country’s rising pension debts. 

 

Gen Z Carries More Credit Card Debt

 

Members of Generation Z are increasingly relying on credit card debt to make ends meet. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that the average credit card balance of 22-to-24-year-olds in the United States is $2,834 based on data from TransUnion, a credit dent reporting agency.  Debt levels are almost 30 percent higher than in 2013 after adjusting for inflation.  

The result is an increase in financial stress among Gen Zs.

Younger people with higher debt are more delinquent on credit-card payments and need to rely on family for help if they lose their job, say economists and financial advisers. They also often delay life milestones, including homeownership and marriage, say the economists.

“This is a generation that is feeling financial stress in a more acute way than millennials did a decade ago,” said Charlie Wise, head of global research at TransUnion.

Some of the factors driving the rise in credit card debt.

1. Rising rents.  Young people tend to be renters.  Apartment rents are on a tear.  From March 2020 to March 2024, apartments rents are up by 22 percent according to data from the BLS. 

2. Salaries are stagnant.  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the median salary of a new college graduate in 2024 was $60,000, little changed form the inflation adjusted median of $58,858 in 2020. 

3. Interest rates are much higher today than just two years ago.  High rates on credit card debt make it more difficult to chip away on principal balances.   

4. Doom spending to relieve stress. 

The result is a generation of young people that increasingly fret about money.  A recent study by the accounting firm Ernst and Young found that 52 percent of young Americans are concerned about not having enough money. 

Most Millennials, Gen Zs Not Able to Save in Today’s Economy

 

A new survey from the National Endowment for Financial Education (NAFE) reveals the truly dire nature of the financial situation of young people in America today.

When asked how well the statement “I am just getting by financially” describes their current situation, 71 percent of Gen Zs (18 to 29 year-olds) said that statement describes their financial situation at least “somewhat well” and one in four said that statement describes their situation completely or very well. 

The financial situation of Millennials (30 to 44 year-olds) is just as bad.  Almost one in three—31 percent—of Millennials said that just getting by describes their financial situation completely or very well and another 34 percent said “somewhat well.”

Among those 45 and over, a still very high 57 percent said “just getting by” describes their situation at least somewhat well. 

Saving requires the ability to put some money away at the end of the month.  Saving is particularly important for young people who should be accumulating assets to meet important life goals like getting married, buying a home, or helping children pay for a college education.

Most young Americans are having difficulty meeting their immediate expenses. 

The NAFE survey found that only 29 percent of Gen Zs and 36 percent of Millennials were able to save consistently; they always had some money left over at the end of the month.

By comparison, 38 percent of Gen Zs and 37 percent of Millennials never or rarely had any money left over at the end of the month.  

The inability of younger Gen Zs to save may be due to college costs.  Older Gen Zs and Millennials, however, are in their prime earning years and many do not have children to provide for.

Most young people that are not able to save now may never be able to.  A study of the lifetime earnings of five million Americans by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that for the median American, earnings stagnate between 35 and 55. 

The result is that large numbers of Americans have little hope for their financial future. 

The NEFE survey asked whether respondents agreed with the following statement “I feel like I will never have the things I want in life.”

Fifty-nine percent of Gen Zs and Millennials at least somewhat agreed that they would never have the things that they want in life. 

And when asked whether they ‘were concerned that the money they had or will save won’t last,” 72 percent of Gen Zs as well as 72 percent of Millennials were at least somewhat concerned their savings would run out.