Almost one in four voters in Europe now cast their ballot for far-right parties, research shows, a proportion that has grown nearly fivefold since the mid-1990s and climbed particularly steeply over the past three years.
The research, led by Matthijs Rooduijn, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam, for the PopuList survey of European far-left, far-right and populist parties, also found that almost 30% of Europeans now voted for anti-establishment parties, another record.
“When we started the PopuList project in 2018, the key finding was that one in four Europeans were voting for populist parties, mostly far-left and far-right,” Rooduijn said. “Now one in four are voting for far-right parties, mostly populist. It’s a big shift.”
According to the findings of the study, the surge in support for far-right parties was particularly noticeable between 2023 and 2025: far-right parties frequently achieved historic successes in national elections in major countries such as France and the United Kingdom in 2024, and in Germany the following year.