Almost one in four Europeans voted for a hard-right party in their most recent national election, according to new research, with support having doubled over the past decade in a shift researchers describe as one of the most significant political transformations in modern European history.
The study, led by the PopuList Project at the University of Amsterdam, found that more than 23 per cent of European voters cast their ballots for hard-right parties in their countries’ most recent national elections — up from around 13 per cent a decade ago and just five per cent in 1995. The sharpest acceleration came between 2023 and 2025, according to the research.
The findings reflect a string of concrete electoral advances across the continent. Austria’s Freedom Party surged from 16 to 29 per cent in its 2024 elections, while Portugal’s Chega rose from seven to 18 per cent in the same period. France’s National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, gained ground in municipal elections earlier this year, and the Alternative for Germany continues to lead or perform strongly in polls. Czech populist Andrej Babis, an ally of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, returned as prime minister last year. Hard-right populist parties now form part of ruling coalitions in Croatia, Czechia, Italy and Finland, and prop up a right-wing minority government in Sweden.
The picture is not uniformly one of advance, however. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ PVV lost almost a third of its seats and finished second in last year’s elections, and in Hungary, Orbán’s Fidesz party was defeated by a centre-right opponent in April, suggesting the movement is not without vulnerabilities.
Matthijs Rooduijn, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam who worked on the PopuList study, told the Guardian that voter attitudes towards core hard-right themes such as immigration had not necessarily hardened over the decade, but had become far more important in determining how people actually voted. He also pointed to the normalisation of hard-right parties as a key driver of their growth. “The bigger and more successful they get, the more ‘normal’ they become,” he said. “That’s helped by the media, and by mainstream parties embracing their ideas.”
Rooduijn said hard-right parties had become increasingly sophisticated in how they communicated their message. “They know how to frame their message, which ultimately is always about an in-group and an out-group — the nation versus immigrants, judges, ‘woke elites’, whoever. That produced a ‘heroes versus villains’ narrative, tied to an idealised past in which everything was better. And they’ve got way better at articulating that, at stirring emotions: anger, contempt, also pride and hope. They’ve professionalised.”
