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. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.

Analysis by more than 150 political scientists in 31 countries found the proportion of Europeans voting for a far-right party in their country’s most recent national elections had risen to more than 23%, from about 10% a decade ago and roughly 5% in 1995.

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.”

The surge in far-right support was particularly marked between 2023 and 2025, the research found, with far-right parties making often historic gains in national elections in big countries such as France and the UK in 2024, and then in Germany the following year.

Austria’s far-right Freedom party (FPÖ) advanced from 16% to 29% in elections in 2024, while France’s National Rally (RN) surged from 19% to 37% to become the largest single party in the French parliament, and Chega in Portugal rose from 7% to 18%.

In Britain, Reform UK boosted its vote share from 2% in 2019 (as the Brexit party) to 14% in 2024, the research said. Reform has previously insisted it is not far-right. It did not respond to a request for comment by the Guardian.

In Germany’s 2025 vote, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) doubled its score from 10% to 21%, finishing as the country’s second-largest party for the first time.

Far-right populist parties are now in government as part of ruling coalitions in Croatia, Czechia, Italy and Finland, propping up a rightwing minority government in Sweden, and, the analysis finds, leading in the polls in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and the UK.

Such parties have also suffered recent defeats, including in the Netherlands, where Geert Wilders’ Freedom party (PVV) lost nearly a third of its seats to finish second last year, and Hungary, where Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz was comprehensively beaten by his centre-right rival in April.

Despite these setbacks, however, the share of European voters casting their ballots for far-right parties has continued to rise. “It’s important to emphasise this isn’t a sudden thing,” Rooduijn said. “It’s been under way for decades, and accelerating recently.”

A range of factors lie behind the trend, according to the experts working on the PopuList, which includes political parties that have won at least one parliamentary seat, or 2% of the popular vote, in national legislative elections since 1989.

First, Rooduijn said, research suggested voter attitudes towards core far-right themes, such as immigration, had not changed significantly over time, but had become far more significant in the decisions people made about which party to vote for.

Second, far-right parties had become normalised – a self-reinforcing process. “The bigger and more successful they get, the more ‘normal’ they become,” Rooduijn said. “That’s helped by the media, and by mainstream parties embracing their ideas.”

Lastly, far-right parties were “just really, really good storytellers”, he said. “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, he said. “And they’ve got way better at articulating that, at stirring emotions: anger, contempt, also pride and hope. They’ve professionalised.”

The PopuList was launched eight years ago in partnership with the Guardian. In line with widely accepted practice among political scientists, it defines far-right parties as those that espouse two core ideologies: “nativism” and “authoritarianism”.

Nativism is the belief that a country should be inhabited solely by members of its native group. Nativists are therefore generally hostile to immigrants and non-natives, portraying them as a threat to the culture and interests of the native population.

It is also a major form of “exclusionism”: far-right parties are typically also exclusionist towards other perceived “out-groups”, such as people of different religions or sexual orientation, or establishment elites.

Authoritarians believe societies should be well ordered and all transgressions against authority should be punished severely. They see a strict approach to law and order.