There's reason to believe that recent election results reflect a surge in anti-incumbency sentiment
Many analysts assert that the rise of populist, right-wing movements are threatening democracy. But based on my recent travels overseas from the Middle East to western and central Europe, I believe that the election results reflect not so much a popular swing to the right, but rather, a growing frustration with incumbent governments.
True, the populist right has made inroads. Europe’s first populist pioneer, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, has won four consecutive elections as prime minister since his initial victory in 2010. Since then, he has transformed Hungary into what he has called an "illiberal democracy," but what the European Parliament has denounced as an "electoral autocracy."
In Italy in 2022, the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy won the highest vote share of any single part in the nation’s national election, propelling to power as prime minister its leader, Giorgia Meloni. In those national elections, four-in-ten Italian voters cast their ballots not just for the Brothers, but for the other two major right-wing parties, Forza Italia and Lega, up a third from the last election in 2018.
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Judith Miller is a contributing editor of City Journal and adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow her on Twitter here.
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