Europe's Election Narrative Is Too Reductive: The Left Is Rising Too, Not Just the Far Right
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/cas-mudde. "Look again – there’s more to Europe’s election trends than far-right success | Cas Mudde | The Guardian." September 26, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that news coverage of European elections unfairly focuses only on far-right wins while ignoring that leftwing parties are also gaining significant ground, especially among young people and city dwellers. This skewed narrative is not just inaccurate—it actually helps the far right by making it seem like it's the only alternative to a failing political establishment.
Conclusion
The dominant media narrative that Europe's elections show an 'embattled mainstream threatened by emboldened far right' is a reductive oversimplification that ignores significant leftward trends, and this narrative is both empirically inaccurate and politically dangerous.
Premises
- In Germany's recent regional elections, two of three states (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin) are likely to be governed by leftwing coalitions, while only one saw dramatic far-right success without governing power
- Die Linke (the Left party) won a stunning victory in Berlin, gaining almost twice as many new votes as the AfD, with 54% of young women voting for them
- This leftward trend among young voters and multicultural urban electorates is also visible elsewhere in Europe (Copenhagen, New York) and in Sweden, yet receives far less media attention than far-right gains
- The 'horseshoe theory' equating far-left and far-right as equal threats to liberal democracy is factually inaccurate, since most 'far-left' parties like Die Linke are moderate former-communist parties resembling 1970s social democracy, not revolutionary or populist movements
- Only the far right actually threatens liberal democracy (and in AfD's case, democracy itself), while the far left primarily threatens established parties, not the democratic system
- This reductive 'establishment vs far right' framing inadvertently reinforces the far right's own populist narrative that pits 'the elite' (all mainstream parties) against 'the people' (represented by the far right)
Assumptions
- Media and political commentary have significant power to shape public perception and political outcomes through the narratives they choose to emphasize
- Voter dissatisfaction with 'really existing democracy' is a legitimate driver of both far-left and far-right support, rather than one being more authentic
- Historical ideological transformation of 'far-left' parties is stable and accurately characterizes their current threat level to democracy
- Population size and demographic representativeness (e.g., Saxony-Anhalt vs Berlin) should factor into how much weight an election result is given in a national narrative
- The horseshoe theory's political usefulness for centrist politicians like Merz makes it strategically motivated rather than objectively accurate