A startling poll released on 1 October showed Germany’s far-right AfD (Alternatif für Deutschland) is the country’s most popular party. As the Netherlands heads to the polls this month, an alliance of Christian-conservative and centre-right parties looks likely to form government.
A recent analysis from Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch sheds light on this trend.
Burn-Murdoch shows that Europeans stand clearly to the right of their politicians on “cultural issues”. The two most significant are crime and sentencing and immigration and assimilation.
For instance, 87% of the British public believe “immigrants should be required to adapt to the customs of this country” (most of those “strongly agree”), while only 47% of politicians hold the same view. In Germany, 75% of the public hold this belief versus just 33% of politicians.
In Sweden, the figure is 61% of the public versus 34% of politicians. In Portugal, it’s 72% of the public and 18% of politicians.
The same pattern holds in respect of tougher criminal sentencing. Of the public, 77% support tougher sentencing, whereas only 40% of politicians do.
“Western publics have long desired greater emphasis on order, control and cultural integration,” observes John Burn-Murdoch. “Their politicians have tilted in the opposite direction.”
Ironically, Denmark – whose controversial “remigration” policies include financial incentives for Syrians to return to Syria – in fact has a less culturally right-wing population, but has a political class roughly in line with popular sentiment.
The German political class has shown precisely how not to handle this rightward cultural shift. By “firewalling” the AfD, they’ve allowed the party paint itself as anti-establishment and insulate itself from the consequences of its policies. Its support will likely continue to grow until the firewall becomes untenable.
The Netherlands, on the other hand, formed a cabinet that included far-right leader Geert Wilders, when his party topped the 2023 election shortly after the Hamas attacks. Wilders then refused to implement his policies in a manner corresponding to his actual parliamentary strength (i.e., some 23% of the vote), and his subsequent resignation has caused his party to collapse out of serious contention in 2025.
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