How The Euro Right Wins The Youth Vote

Americans can learn a lot from nationalists across the Atlantic

Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom won big in Dutch parliamentary elections last month. One of the keys to the nationalist’s party success was its large share of the youth vote. While it’s not new for young Europeans to vote for the “far right,” its ocurencealways inspires liberals to wonder why this happened. Young people in the Anglosphere tend to be more left-wing than their elders. Seeing the reverse in continental Europe always surprises outside observers.

The Guardian, a British outlet famous for its leftist bent, tried to solve this mystery last month. It asked young Dutchmen why they voted for the Party for Freedom. The Dutch youth said they did so because it was the one party that addressed their concerns.

“I voted for Wilders, and many of my friends did too,” one young man told The Guardian. “I don’t want to live with my parents forever. I want my own home, and to be able to provide for my family later on. Wilders wants to figure out the housing crisis, and make our healthcare better. Those are the most important topics for me.”

The article tried to argue that these young voters are not reacting to immigration or cultural change. It’s all in response to the system failing them. It quotes a left-wing researcher to support its case:

We know in many countries young people are more pro-immigration than older voters. They have not become xenophobic. But their lives are more precarious. These are often votes for what in this Dutch election was called “livelihood security:”.

However, the article interviews a young Dutchman who emphasizes that he voted for Wilders because of immigration andinsists he was not a racist for doing so.

The interview subjects conveyed that the Party for Freedom, unlike the establishment parties, cares about their problems and shares their frustration with the status quo. The young voters say they’re tired of living in a society where their ambitions are thwarted, they can’t afford a home of their own, and migrants take up the lion’s share of benefits. It’s issues that ordinary people experience that drive them to vote nationalist.

Other European parties, such as AfD in Germany and National Rally in France, also boast of strong youth support. However, youth support isn’t universal for the Right in Europe. Shortly before media outlets wailed over young Dutch voting for Wilders, they praised young Poles for voting against their conservative government. The ruling Polish conservative party fell from power thanks to the October elections. Young Poles voted for left-wing parties for a variety of reasons. Some felt the conservative Law and Justice Party was too dedicated to the interests of pensioners, others were inspired to vote against the party’s abortion restrictions. There was also a gender divide in how the youth voted. Young men were more likely to vote for the nationalist Konfederacja party while young women voted for the Left. Both choices were a rejection of Law and Justice. 

Law and Justice, unlike the Party for Freedom, was in power. Young Poles disenchanted with the direction of their country weren’t going to cast their ballots for the party in charge. That’s one important difference, but not the only one. Law and Justice also places a greater emphasis on social conservatism than most Euro nationalist parties. This stance appeals to Poland’s staunch Catholics but turns off a lot of young voters. 

What lessons can the American Right learn from the European experience? Is it possible for nationalist candidates to draw enthusiastic youth support? Probably not – at least not in the near term.

There are significant differences between Europe and America that prevent the Right from winning a majority of the youth vote. Young Americans are far less white than their elders. While young Europeans are also more “diverse” than their elders, whites are still the overwhelming majority in this demographic. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans under 16 are non-white. We’re only a few years away from the majority of voters between 18 and 29 being non-white. Demographics make the youth vote less inclined to support the American Right.

There are a few other factors that likely diminish youth support for the GOP. One is that the party does not address actual youth concerns. For as long as I’ve been involved in conservative politics, youth outreach has been a joke. Its sole purpose is to superficially tie things young people might be into with the most boomercon shit imaginable. This 2012 video of a retired Republican senator dancing to “Gangnam Style” to raise awareness about the debt perfectly captures this model.

 

Efforts to win over young people combine boomer concerns with millennial/zoomer memes. It’s a combo that only conservative activists appreciate. To everyone else, it’s cringe.

That cuts to the heart of conservative youth outreach. It’s carried out by young activists who hold very different opinions and attitudes from their peers. NPR recently interviewed some of the young Republican leaders trying to win over Gen Z. Their concerns are the same as their older peers. For at least one of them, her primary issue was abortion, which is one of the issues driving youth support for Democrats. This outreach won’t work for Republicans..

In the past, conservative activists successfully convinced themselves that what’s important to them is also important to young Americans. Conservatives genuinely believed that millennials were the “pro-life generation” because it was a core issue for young people involved in Con Inc. Polling showed that millennials and zoomers were certainly not the pro-life generation. But convenient myths can live on regardless of what the data says.

To understand young voters, it’s worth knowing the Democrat strategy to win them over for 2024. The two core planks of this strategy are student debt relief and abortion. Abortion proved to be a winner for Democrats in recent elections. Nearly 70 percent of young women and 55 percent of young men say that access to abortion is an important issue to them. Sixty-three percent of voters in the 18-29 category voted for Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Polls also show that student debt relief is very important to young voters, with roughly 60 percent of Gen Z saying they back President Biden’s efforts to cancel some of the debt.

Republicans are not likely to join in this effort. Republicans will remain resolutely pro-life because of the party’s coalition. The GOP doesn’t want to risk alienating conservative activists and evangelicals, but that decision will come at the cost of lower youth support. It was the same with Law and Justice in Poland. Student loan debt forgiveness is extremely unpopular among Republicans. Only 11 percent of Republicans said it was a good idea in a 2023 poll. The GOP base is older and more likely to not have a college degree. They won’t celebrate something they perceive as a bailout for libtard snowflakes. They think the real solution for student loan debt is to go to trade school.

There are ideas the GOP can pursue to increase their share of the youth vote. Emphasizing a message of how the Democrats want to rob their future is one way. Unlike in the past, it shouldn’t hone in on the government’s debt. It should highlight the things that young people experience in their daily lives. Democrats want to impose policies that discriminate against whites in the workplace, make it harder to buy a home, and turn cities into crime-ridden hellholes. Talking about how the system shafts young whites is a better strategy than using gifs from The Office to sell spending cuts. 

It would also be smart for Republicans to get around the abortion trap. They will never become pro-choice, but deemphasizing it on the campaign trail or simply saying it’s a states rights’ issue could defang its potency for the other side. Campaigning on a national abortion restriction does not help the GOP.

The general takeaway Americans should have from the Euro Right’s success with young voters is that the party needs to seriously address the concerns and frustrations of this demographic. Poorly made memes is not how you accomplish this. It requires the American Right to paint the Left as responsible for the problems youth face and offer real solutions to these problems. Only then can they improve their dismal levels of youth support.