During Germany’s latest federal election, young men predominantly voted for the populist far-right Afd party. On the other hand, the populist left ‘Die Linke’ and BSW parties far outperformed the centre-left, right and far-right parties with young women.
This is no isolated incident. It is part of a major trend. For example, here in South Korea young women rapidly turning to the far-left and men, after leaning left for years, are now sharply turning to the right.
Similarly, in the Netherlands, UK and US, young men have propelled populist-right —previously old-boys clubs— like Reform UK, the Dutch freedom party, and Trump’s MAGA movement to incredible election victories.
So, what is going on, why are Gen-Z women turning to the populist left, and men to the populist right?
To answer that question, I’ve turned to the scientific literature on populism. Where, despite there being plenty of examples of how populists either became autocrats, like Putin, or how they ruined their economies, like Chavez & Maduro did in Venezuela, I did NOT start by just assuming populism is ALWAYS BAD. I also wanted to find out whether or not it actually makes sense to lump left-wing populists like Bernie Sanders, and Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, in the same category as right-wing populists like Trump and Farage.
But, before getting into all of that, I first want to go back to the most fundamental question of all, which is
CH1 What is populism?
Where, the first insight I got from the literature is that… strikingly, in the 1990s social scientists typically considered populism a Latin American phenomena.
But, as this graph for populist parties in Europe clearly shows, while support for (1) far-left, (2) populist far-left, (3) middle of the road populist, (4) far-right populist and far-right parties was indeed pretty low in the early 1990s —about 10%— it has now surged to around 30%.
But, okay…. hold on. Far-left. Far-left populist, regular populist…. far-right-populist…far-right not populist… If we truly want to understand what Gen-z is voting for, I think we need to be super clear about what these categories actually mean. We need to go beyond the typical political negative takes like populists are radical extremists… or positive takes such as: populists are those that actually listen to the people.
After all, who determines what is extreme? And, which democratic party in their right mind would ever say that they DO NOT listen to the people. Therefore, social scientists have come up with three more neutral definitions about what currently classifies as far-left, far-right, and populist.
Firstly, a party is classified as ‘populist’ if it places the struggle between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite establishment’ at the core of their political agenda.
So, when US vice president Vance says that he sees
my voice as being explicitly anti-elitist explicitly anti-regime
It makes sense that the research, I read classifies the MAGA movement as populist.
Similarly, they classify Bernie Sander’s movement as populist because it puts the fight against elites, or as he more often calls them, oligarchs, at the center of his movement.
However, anyone who is familiar with American politics will tell you that besides talking about a fight against elites, Sanders and Trump could not be more different. In fact, the folks that created this graph for European parties, would almost certainly classify Trump’s movement as far-right populist, and Sander’s movement as far-left populist.
So, what’s the difference?
Well, according to the researchers behind this graph, while a left-wing party may favor redistribution, far-left parties believe the capitalist system as it is today should be rejected, and that there should be major, rather than modest, redistribution of resources in society.
To illustrate, using this definition, social scientists classify the labor party here in Belgium as far-left because it proposes radical taxes for rich people AND advocates for using price controls in certain occasions, and nationalization of certain businesses. However, they don’t classify it as populist because in its messaging it doesn’t focus heavily on a battle between the people and ‘elites.’
On the other hand, far-right parties are classified by two beliefs. The first is that they are nativist, which means that the state should be purely inhabited by the group that already lives there and that immigrants are a fundamental threat. The second characteristic of far-right parties is that they believe society should be strictly ordered and that those that defy authority should be strictly punished.
So, coming back to Trump’s MAGA populist movement, first, we can see that the first two points it talks about are “Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion.” and carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.
Second, Trump punishes those that defy authority harshly indeed. Foreign students that protest on US campuses are deported. Immediately pulling funding from universities that have diversity policies. Freezing billions of Dollars to universities that don’t comply with his orders to shut down.
No previous right-wing president has been so strict on immigration or so harsh in punishments for defying authority. This is why Trump is a far-right rather than regular right wing populist if we use the scientific definition.
But, as you may have noticed. Far-right, and far-left … yes they are often both populists. But, besides that, they could not be more different. So, why lump them together in one single graph?
Well, researchers have found that populist movements are similar to each other in two more ways than just railing against elites. The first is that they often distil complex political, social, and economic issues into overly simplistic narratives, such as it’s the fault of the oligarchs, or it is the fault of immigrants. The second is that, unlike your typical boring politician, populist movements are often led by a charismatic leader who is portrayed as uniquely capable of representing and fulfilling ‘the will of the people.’
But, then again. So, what?
Maybe elites have actually become to powerful in many countries? Maybe politicians have actually been using complexity to avoid taking action. Maybe some countries do need a strong leader to finally get things done.
This could all be true. So, then why is populism often seen as ‘bad,’ even by so-called ‘objective’ scientists. In other words,
What’s wrong with a bit of populism?
Luckily, because populism is not a new phenomena, social scientists have actually been able to study them historically.
And, essentially they have found that —on average— populist governments —both from the left and right— have two negative effects on the countries they govern.
The first is that populists challenge democratic institutions and erode checks and balances. For example, when dr. Jordan Kyle and Yasha Mounk studied 46 populist governments across 33 countries between 1990 and 2018, they found that —on average— populist leaders were 4x more likely to trigger democratic backsliding on the popular Polity democracy index.
They also found that, once elected, populist leaders had a tendency to stay in office much longer than non-populist politicians. In fact, many never left office.
The longer a populist leader was in office, the less likely they were to ever leave.
Importantly, this study includes left-wing populists like the Kirchners in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Chavez in Venezuela, as well as right-wing populists like Victor Orban in Hungary, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel.
In theory, populists may stick around longer because they are so good at ruling. However, in practice, that is unlikely because this brings us to our second problem with populists, which is that —ON AVERAGE— they tend to be bad for the economy.
Specifically, in a long historical study from 1900 to 2020, dr. Manuel Funke and his co-authors compare the rule of current populists as well as populists from long ago like Perón in Argentina, Mussolini in Italy, and Sukarno in Indonesia, to artificially created dopperlanger country that consists of a mixture of countries that were in a similar position when these leaders came to power.
As you can see here, they find that compared to the doppelganger economy, which is the dashed line, on average all populists reduce economic growth, where left-wing populists do slightly worse than right-wing populists.
However, importantly, there are, as you may expect, big differences between populist leaders, even in within their right- or left-wing variations.
For example, leaders like Italy’s right-wing ex-prime minister Berlusconi, and Venezuela’s left-wing Maduro clearly managed their economies very poorly. On the other hand, populist leaders like the right-wing Erdogan in Turkey and the left-wing Kirchners in Argentina started out strong, only to stagnate after being in power for longer. On the other hand, there are right-wing leaders like Hungary’s Orban, and Israel’s Netanyahu, whom, wile very tricky to get out of office have so far ACTUALLY seen solid economic growth. But, when it comes to historical populists, there are just 2 populists that actually outperformed their doppelganger economies. These were Brazil’s Getulio Vargas and Evo Morales in Bolivia, both left-wing populists.
So, the outcome of these types of studies is not that voting populist spells certain doom for your country. In fact, some previous American presidents associated with populism, like Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR for short, are still seen as some of America’s best presidents.
But, what these studies do show —quite clearly— is that whether or not you vote right or left wing populist, it is a really risky bet. Historically, there is a significant chance that your favorite right-wing or left-wing populist leader will not leave office through democratic means. And, there is also a significant chance that they will only make the economy worse.
So, then… why do people, and especially young people do it?
Why do people vote populist?
Essentially, social scientists have found two reasons. The first reason is economic insecurity, where the economic literature has shown that that populism is much more likely to emerge in so-called left-behind regions, such as in Germany’s east.
In other words, sure, the economy can look good on paper. But, if inequality is really high, and the economy is not working for enough people, then, yeah, at some point they will get desperate and elect a populist.
This can explain why populism was already so prevalent in Latin America before the 1990s. It can also explain why populism surged in the US and Europe after the great financial crisis.
It can explain why left-wing populist parties like Syriza and Five Star surged in Greece and Italy during the Euro crisis. It could also explain why Bernie Sanders became so popular with young voters in 2016, but less so in 2019, when youth unemployment dropped to an all time low before Covid hit.
But, as you can see here, today with Gen-Z its different. In Europe today, youth unemployent is still relatively low.
Today, economic insecurity comes from sky high house prices and a the massively increased cost of living in general, that is hitting young people especially hard.
However, when it comes to far-right populism, economists have found that it thrives under different circumstances than left-wing populism. Yes, economic insecurity has to be there. However, far-right populism can only really be explained if culture is taken into account as well. Specifically, far right populist parties tend to thrive with demographics that previously had relatively high social status, which then declined. This can explain why Trump’s is most popular with white working class men in America’s rust-belt, or why Farage’s populist reform UK is ‘eating labour for lunch’ in Britain’s old industrial heartland.
However, until recently, social scientists explained the popularity of far-right populist parties mostly through a nostalgia factor. Brexit and Farage evoke nostalgia for the British Empire. Trump’s make America great again campaign in 2016 did the same.
So, how did these parties convince so many Gen-Z men to vote for them? Well, the trend is too recent for most scientific research to be of any use here. Still, I found three factors that may explain it. The first is a male backlash to a relatively extreme take on feminist ideas in media popular with men such as video games and action movies like Star Wars. The second is that young men are increasingly lonely, which recent research has found to increase the chance of voting far right. Finally, the third factor is that young men are increasingly falling behind young women when it comes to education, which brings considerable social status.
These three trends may then have been supercharged by the rise of social media, where polarizing messages tend to get far more clicks than nuanced ones AND where populist politicians have been much more active. For example, take Trump, who absolutely dominated the YouTube podcast space, which is really popular with young men, Britain’s Farage who is the most followed British politician on TikTok.
So, in
Conclusion
the most likely reason that European and American gen-Z men and women are increasingly turning to populism is the same reason that populism emerges anywhere, increased economic insecurity, thanks to the cost-of-living crisis, especially when it comes to the cost of housing.
Cultural factors may then explain why young men chose the populist right, while young women chose the populist left.
As we’ve seen, voting for a populist leader CAN WORK. But, it is a really risky bet, and, historically speaking, they often make matters worse, not better. So, if centrist politicians want to stop this trend, I actually think the answer is really simple, yet complicated. Build more houses to get house prices down, and re-design the markets for energy and food to get the cost of living down.
Until then, then parties that strongly belief in a solution, that may be oversimplified, such as banning immigration, will likely become more and more popular.
And, not just because of young people, mind you, because older generations are suffering from increased economic insecurity as well. If you want to read more about that, I highly recommend checking out the following three analyses from our advertising sponsor: the Economist, which now offers a 20% discount exclusively for Money & Macro viewers.
The first is this analysis about how gen-X is the real loser generation. Then, follow up with this unexpected analysis about why boomers can’t always spend all that money they have, and then finally, to end on a positive note, check out Reasons to be cheerful about Generation Z
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