The kids are not all right-wing: the data on young voters in Europe

“Young people are moving right,” we sometimes hear. Just as some clichés have a grain of truth, the data we collected does indeed show an increase in the popularity of the far right among 18–24 and 25–34 year-old voters. In countries such as France, Germany, Sweden and Spain, this trend is accompanied by a rejection of traditional political parties by young voters.

While 6% of 18–24 year-olds and 13% of 25–34 year-olds in France voted for the Front National (FN, renamed Rassemblement National in 2018) in the 2002 legislative elections, this figure rose to 33% and 32% respectively in 2024. This trend is accompanied by the breakthrough of the radical right among the general population: support climbed from 11% of first round votes in the 2002 legislative elections, to 34% in 2024.

In Germany, the far right – a marginal proposition at the federal level for many years – is also gaining support among young people. When it was founded in 2013, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won 5.3% of the vote among 18–24 year-olds and 5.4% among 25–34 year-olds. In 2025, the party was the second most popular among 18–24 year-olds (19%) and the most popular among 25–34 year-olds (20.8%).

Even within the limited scope of our analysis, some countries, such as Spain, are clear exceptions.

As part of a pre-election study ahead of the 1 April 2019 legislative elections, the Centre for Sociological Research, a Madrid-based research organisation (CIS), looked at the voting intentions of the Spanish population. At the time, 3% of 18–24 year-olds and 4.5% of 25–34 year-olds surveyed said they intended to vote for the far-right party Vox.

Is Spain therefore a country where young people shun the far right? The idea is certainly tempting, but it needs to be qualified: in 2023, 12.4% of 18–24 year-olds and 11.3% of 25–34 year-olds said they wanted to vote for the Vox, and these figures are much closer to the party’s score among the general population (12.38%).

The exceptional nature of the Spanish political landscape may also be due to the relative “lag” of Vox as a party. Created in 2013, Vox is younger than the other radical right parties in Europe, and this may help explain its lacklustre electoral success compared to other parties.

While Fratelli d’Italia (FDI, radical right), the party of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, won the largest share of the vote in the 2022 Italian general election (26.04%), its success was more limited among younger people (10.61% of 18–24 year-olds and 16.43% of 25–34 year-olds). For Cristiano Vezzoni, professor of political sociology at the University of Milan, “this finding problematises the supranational narrative that generalises a homogeneous European trend of young people moving to the right,” he argues. While recent years have seen an increase in support for the radical right among young people (especially young men) across Europe, “the picture is neither homogeneous nor linear across the continent, and Italy is proof of that.”

Are all the young voters far-right? Not really

The rise of the radical right vote among young people has sometimes led to excessive media focus on this issue. This has overshadowed other notable trends among young voters: the left-wing vote and the dispersion of votes.

In France, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), a disparate electoral coalition ranging from the centre-left to the radical left – following the CHES nomenclature – received overwhelming support from younger voters: no less than 48% of 18–24 year-olds and 38% of 25–34 year-olds voted for the NFP in 2024, results well above the national average of 28.1%.

The popularity of left-wing parties varies greatly depending on the country and political context. In Sweden, the Left Party (12.52% of the vote) was overtaken for the first time in the 2022 general election by the far-right Sweden Democrats, the fourth most popular party among 18–24 year olds, with 13.29% of the vote. Although the Left Party, classified as “radical left” by the CHES index, has been losing support among young voters, it remains much more popular among this age group (6.75% in 2022) than among the general population. The popularity of radical left parties can also be seen elsewhere in Europe, though it should be noted that the figures only cover people who actually vote.

The “dispersion” of electoral preferences

The data we collected also identifies another trend that is observable in several European countries, namely the “dispersion” of the electorate across the ballot. This phenomenon has been particularly striking since the 2010s.

In Germany, the historical dominance of traditional parties such as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has gradually eroded, narrowing the gap between parties.

In 2002, the 18–24 age group was mainly divided between the SPD (38.1%) and the CDU (23.5%); in the 2009 federal elections, the results for the four leading parties (SPD, CDU, Greens, and Liberals) ranged from 15% to 21%. Fragmentation of the youth vote can also be observed in 2017.

While the youth vote in Spain has long been strongly divided between two traditional parties, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE, centre-left) and the People’s Party (PP, right), the period from 2015–2023 saw a decline in the popularity of both parties, paving the way for liberal, regional, radical left, and, later, far-right alternatives.

In some cases, this dispersion of the youth vote across the electoral options can lead to their reconfiguration.

In France, the prevalence of the Socialist Party and the UMP (renamed Les Républicains in 2015) among young voters has been challenged by the rise in popularity of the radical right and the emergence of Emmanuel Macron’s La République en Marche, which briefly managed to take the lead among 18–24 and 25–34 year olds in the 2017 legislative elections. The data collected by Voxeurop may indicate the emergence of a new electoral balance in which the youth vote is mainly split between radical left and right-wing parties.

This dispersion of votes may be partly explained by the volatility of young voters, who are less reluctant to change parties between elections.

This is the view of Javier Lorente Fontaneda, assistant professor in the Department of Public Law and Political Science at Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid. “Party identification develops over time and is closely related to the life cycle: the older individuals are, the stronger their party identification tends to be. This has been well documented since the 1960s.” When political systems go through periods of change, older voters tend to remain loyal to their traditional parties, unlike younger voters, who are more likely to support new formations. Parties are aware of this mechanism, “which helps to explain why new parties design specific campaigns targeting young people, particularly through social media.”

New commitments

According to Lorente Fontaneda, age plays a fundamental role in political participation: while young people tend to vote less than their elders, they participate more in protests. “but protest cycles are irregular, which makes comparisons more complex,” he explains.

For Cristiano Vezzoni, professor of political sociology at the University of Milan, one of the reasons for the lower turnout among young voters is “the fact that in contemporary society, there are many options for occupying one’s time, and these options compete with each other.” Since time is a limited resource, the incentives to participate have to be strong. “Today, the incentives offered by traditional politics are meagre, or even off-putting,” says Vezzoni. High-profile demonstrations “mobilise people when their involvement is linked to a strong identity and ideological component” – something that individual participation through voting no longer offers, he adds.

Are young people depoliticised? For some, the question is a dead end. “Today’s 50-somethings are much less involved than 50-somethings were 20 years ago,” notes French political scientist and professor Vincent Tiberj. In order to understand the extent of voters’ “great resignation” from institutional politics and parties, he suggests looking at the problem from a generational perspective, rather than an age group perspective. “The phenomenon is much broader and much deeper,” says Tiberj, who notes a similar electoral transformation elsewhere in Europe.

“The shift towards the Rassemblement National (RN) between 2022 and 2024 is not due to young people switching their allegiance to the RN,” Tiberj continues. “On the contrary, the majority of them are voting against it, and by a wide margin.”

“By focusing on young people, we forget that in fact, the shift is among older voters,” he explains, adding that the latter, in addition to voting more for the far right than before, are also more numerous, live longer, and participate more regularly in elections.

“The ballot box is becoming less and less representative of society,” adds Tiberj. “The RN is gaining ground because the left-wing parties are unable to reactivate and rebuild ties with many voters, particularly among the younger generations. By failing to reach out to abstainers and trying to rebuild politics with them, you lose.”

Thanks to Michael Škvrňák, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and PAQ Research, who kindly shared his data on electoral practices in the Czech Republic.