THE WRITING WAS ON THE WALL-OR, AT least, in the polls. Despite the fact that young Europeans turned out en masse to prevent a predicted far-right surge during the 2019 European Parliament elections, they wouldn't be compelled to do so again five years later. If anything, analysts warned, many would end up voting for the far right.
And vote they did. While the June European Parliament elections ended in victory for Europe’s center-right parties, the radical right made historic gains—enough to throw the bloc’s biggest powers off- balance. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally emerged victorious in the elections with more than 30% of the vote— an electoral blow so devastating that French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap legislative election expected to conclude on July 7. In Germany, the extremeright Alternative for Germany (AfD) finished second only to the opposition center-right Christian Democrats, trouncing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and their coalition partners, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, and throwing the government’s stability into doubt.
Young people played their part. Among French voters under 34, the National Rally was the most popular party, securing 32% of their votes. Though the AfD wasn’t the most popular party among young Germans, it tripled its support among 16-to-24-year-olds from 5% in 2019 to 16% today. Germany lowered its legal voting age to 16 from 18 ahead of the European elections.
This story is from the July 15, 2024 edition of Time.
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This story is from the July 15, 2024 edition of Time.
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