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.
