Europe’s Elections & What History Suggests About What May Happen in the US - Top 3 Takeaways
- History repeating itself. It started last year with the success of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and the Argentinian election win by Javier Milei. As was noted last fall in the Washington Post: Dutch election shows far right rising and reshaping Europe. Historic political momentum has given the far right a seat at Europe’s table and a chance to reshape the region’s politics and policies. The latest victory came in the socially liberal Netherlands, where hard-right icon Geert Wilders and his anti-European Union, anti-Muslim and anti-immigration Party for Freedom landed a shocking first place finish this past week in parliamentary elections. The unexpectedly strong showing by the “Dutch Donald Trump,” who has long pledged to ban the Quran and halt acceptance of asylum seekers, amounted to a powerful warning to mainstream Europe. "Everywhere in Europe we see the same right-wing wind blowing,” Tom Van Grieken, a Belgian hard-right populist, said in response to Wilders’s win. “The advance that has been underway for a while is clearly continuing in the Netherlands. We share our patriotism and want to put our people first again. Nothing can match that motivation.” Wilders’s success, while shaped in part by domestic conditions, has further buoyed the global hard right, days after Javier Milei, a far-right economist and former television pundit, was elected president in Argentina. Far-right parties have taken power in Italy, extended their rule in Hungary, earned a coalition role in Finland, become de facto government partners in Sweden, entered Parliament in Greece and made striking gains in regional elections in Austria and Germany. Slovakia is also something of a far-right success story, with the far-right Slovak National Party among the coalition partners supporting populist Robert Fico. In the end these were all the countries where conservatives made significant gains last year: Argentina, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden. As Europeans wrapped up four days of elections yesterday across 27 countries what we’re seeing play out is...
- More of the same... Except it’s MUCH MORE of the same. Compared to the previous European Parliamentary election turnout, as voting was wrapping up yesterday, we were hearing reports of nearly 10% more Europeans having made their way to polls to make their voices heard. And what was heard in Europe, and now the world, is that Europeans want more conservative leadership. Europeans increasingly want to put an end to open border illegal immigration policies. They’re exhausted with the crushing effects of historically high inflation that have made the quality of life worse for the average European in recent years. They’re increasingly skeptical of putting worldwide climate accords ahead of the energy needs of their country. Do these themes sound familiar? Last December when asked about the changes in the European political landscape during the year I said this:
- Literally from one side of the world to the other there are examples of a growing rejection of leftist policies and politicians for often the most conservative options available to voters. This is a far more pervasive trend around the world than anything we’ve seen since the early years following World War II. In 2016 the rise of Boris Johnson in England and the British people opting for Brexit that summer proved to be a sign of what was to come in the US later that year. What we’re seeing play out in Europe may well prove to be a form of history repeating itself – but in a much more pervasive way. It isn’t just England taking a stand against progressivism. What we’re seeing is that most of Europe is taking a stand against it. As part of my analysis of worldwide elections last December I said this: Should all of this be taken to mean that come next November we’ll see something similar in this country? Only if you have a crystal ball that tells you that the biggest issues today will be the biggest issues eleven months from now (though there is a good chance they will). But what the polls in this country are telling you, with Trump performing an average of 9-points better against Biden in a hypothetical rematch today, compared to Election Day 2020, is that if the election were to be held today there would almost certainly be a similar result to what we’ve seen with the worldwide trend this year. What’s changed in the six months since I shared that sentiment? Not much. I mean yes Trump’s considered a convicted felon in New York, for now, but otherwise – he's performing 8-points better against Biden than Election Day 2020 and the concerns of Americans are exactly the same. And they happen to be the same concerns that Europeans just issued a huge statement on in their elections. If history repeats itself, Trump won’t just win the presidential election in November, he’ll win it by a wider margin than he did eight years ago. What’s more is that if the sentiment shift holds, Republicans will also gain complete control of Congress in the process delivering a mandate to conservatives in this country to deliver the policies that Europeans are hoping their newly elected representation will deliver overseas.