Populist Right-Wing Parties Lead Polls in Europe’s Biggest Economies

LONDON: For the first time, populist or far-right parties are leading the polls in the U.K., France and Germany, the latest sign of growing voter discontent in much of the continent following years of high immigration and inflation.

Far-right and anti-immigration parties have already entered government in countries such as Italy, Finland and the Netherlands.

But this year marks the first time that they have been ahead in Europe’s biggest economies at the same time. That could provoke a period of political turbulence in all three countries, even if national elections are likely still a few years away.

“It’s significant. Leaders in all three countries are grappling with an ascendant far right that looks on the cusp of power unless politicians can address what’s fuelling the rise, which is immigration and cost of living,” said Mujtaba Rahman , head of Europe for risk consulting firm Eurasia.

France’s anti-immigration National Rally has had a consistent lead in polls this year. An Elabe poll last month showed Jordan Bardella, the young protégé of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen , was the most popular with an approval rating of 36%.

Polling for the next presidential vote also suggests National Rally’s candidate—whether it is Bardella or Le Pen—would lead the first round.

In the U.K., the anti-immigration Reform UK, led by the former Brexiteer Nigel Farage , has surged in the past six months and is now comfortably ahead in opinion polls of the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives, the political duopoly that has dominated British politics for the past century.

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has been neck-and-neck with the ruling centre-right Christian Democratic Union in polls since the start of the year. The AfD has pulled slightly ahead in recent weeks, the first time it has done so since April, according to Forsa, one of the country’s leading pollsters.

Like the U.S., much of Europe has experienced two things at the same time since the pandemic: record levels of immigration that have caused a voter backlash, and a surge in inflation that has now eased but left prices for many goods much higher than before—leaving many voters feeling worse off. Social media has also polarised opinions.

Unlike the U.S., however, much of Europe has almost no economic growth, fuelling a widespread sense that the continent faces years of drift , as well as political gridlock.

The sense of economic decline together with rapid immigration is a toxic combination that has turned many voters against established political parties, said Jérémie Gallon, a former French diplomat and head of Europe for consulting firm McLarty Associates.

“It’s the same story from smaller English cities to the French countryside to German towns, where many people feel like the traditional elites look down on them or ignore their concerns,” he said.

Bardella and National Rally have tapped into widespread anxiety that France’s Muslim minority, one of the largest in Europe, is encroaching on the secular values of the French Republic, and into a perceived decline of living standards among working-class and middle-class families.

In recent years, National Rally has evolved from a fringe protest movement to the country’s largest single party in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament.

That hasn’t proved enough yet for the far-right party to take the reins of government, but it has made the country increasingly difficult to govern. France’s government is again on the brink of collapse , less than nine months after conservative French Prime Minister Michel Barnier was ousted from office.

This past week, National Rally pledged to vote against the government again on Sept. 8, when centrist Prime Minister François Bayrou plans to hold a confidence vote in the National Assembly ahead of what are expected to be difficult negotiations for a new budget. On Tuesday, Bardella called on President Emmanuel Macron to hold new parliamentary elections or resign.

In recent years, Germany and the U.K. both saw the biggest surges in immigration in their history, even if the numbers have begun to fall this year. In Germany, the share of residents born outside the country surged from just over 15% in 2017 to a record high of 22% in 2024, according to government data. That compares with about 16% in the U.S.

The U.K., meanwhile, has grappled with a record rise in legal and illegal immigration. Some 4.5 million people arrived legally between 2021 and 2024, primarily from India, Nigeria and China. That is slightly more than those who legally entered the U.S.—which has about five times the population of the U.K.—over that time. In addition, tens of thousands of people have illegally crossed the English Channel on flimsy boats each year to claim asylum.

So far this year, record numbers of people—29,000 through the end of August—have made the crossing, sparking growing pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer , who came to power last year vowing to “smash the gangs” that control migrant smuggling and reduce the crossings.

Adding to the pressure on Starmer, protests flared this summer in some English towns over the use of local hotels where the government is paying for migrants to stay until their asylum cases are resolved.

In Germany, a surprising feature of the AfD’s latest surge is that it has coincided with a drop in immigration numbers under the current government. In the midst of tougher border controls, new asylum requests fell more than a third in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year.

Friedrich Merz , the conservative chancellor, has also done away with some of his predecessor’s green policies, often criticised as excessive by the AfD.

A raft of growth-supporting measures, from corporate tax cuts to rising infrastructure investments, have yet to show any effect, however. The economy contracted by 0.3% in the most recent quarter, extending a two-year recession.

This, said Manfred Güllner, head of Forsa, was one of the factors for the AfD’s recent surge. “Voters are seeing a lot of action, but they’re not feeling any effect,” he said, pointing to the mismatch—or at least the time lag—between promises and results.

The AfD has campaigned for the deportations of immigrants in the country illegally; for Germany to leave the European Union and the euro currency; and for the country to rethink its culture of Holocaust remembrance.

It rejects the notion of man-made climate change. Its economic polices are similar to those of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, but it also wants to increase pension benefits and limit noncitizens’ access to welfare benefits.

Some of its leaders and lawmakers have drawn scrutiny for their sympathies toward Russia and China —the party has called for Germany to resume energy deals with Moscow—while economists have said its push to leave the EU could damage the country’s export industries.

But the party has also enjoyed the support of people close to President Trump, in particular Vice President JD Vance and tech billionaire Elon Musk .

The AfD has tapped into economic frustration to buttress its appeal. Its program in the lead-up to February’s federal election focused on economic proposals, ahead of topics such as security and immigration.

This has helped it gather support among blue-collar voters in economically depressed regions far away from the party’s historical strongholds in former East Germany, such as the Ruhr, the industrial Rust Belt region east of the Rhine Valley.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu delivered a warning to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a recent visit to Washington: Already-high airfares will surge if the war in Iran doesn’t end soon.

Sununu, a Republican who represents some of the biggest airlines as president of the industry group Airlines for America, has for weeks sounded the alarm to Trump administration officials about the economic fallout from high jet fuel prices. The war, Sununu has argued, must come to a close soon, or things will get worse.

Administration officials have gotten the message.

Privately, President Trump’s advisers are increasingly worried that Republicans will pay a political price for the rising fuel costs, according to people familiar with the matter. Many of those advisers are eager to end the war, hoping prices will begin to moderate before November’s midterm elections.

The fallout from the U.S.-Israeli attack in late February has slowed traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, triggering a sharp increase in oil, gasoline and jet-fuel prices.

That means consumers are grappling with high costs ahead of the summer travel season, as they consider vacation plans.

Sixty-three per cent of Americans said they put a great deal or a good amount of blame on Trump for the increase in gas prices, according to a new poll conducted by NPR, PBS and Marist.

More than 8 in 10 Americans said struggles at the gas pump are putting strain on their finances.

Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled in a matter of weeks after the war began, and they have remained high. Airlines have said that will add billions of dollars of additional expenses this year, squeezing profit margins.

U.S. airlines spent more than $5 billion on fuel in March—up 30% from a year earlier, according to government data.

Carriers have been raising ticket prices, hoping to pass the cost along to consumers, and they are culling flights that will no longer make money at higher price levels.

In March, the price of a U.S. domestic round-trip economy ticket rose 21% from a year earlier to $570, according to Airlines Reporting Corp., which tracks travel-agency sales.

So far, airlines have said the higher fares haven’t deterred bookings and they are hoping to recoup more of the fuel-cost increases as the year goes on.

Earlier this week, Trump said the current price of oil is “a very small price to pay for getting rid of a nuclear weapon from people that are really mentally deranged.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that if Iran got a nuclear weapon, the country would have more leverage to keep the strait closed and “make our gas prices like $9 a gallon or $8 a gallon.”

Trump has taken steps in recent days to bring the war to an end. Late Tuesday, the president paused a plan to help guide trapped commercial ships out of the Strait of Hormuz, expressing optimism that a deal could be reached with Iran to end the conflict.

Crude oil prices fell below $100 a barrel on Wednesday, after reports that Iran and the U.S. are working with mediators on a one-page framework to restart negotiations aimed at ending the conflict and opening the strait.

Sununu said Trump administration officials are conscious of the economic fallout from the war: “They get it…and I think that’s why they’re trying to get through the war as fast as they can.”

But he cautioned that it could take months for prices to return to prewar levels.

“Ticket prices won’t go down immediately” after the strait is fully reopened, Sununu said. “You’re looking at elevated ticket prices through the summer and fall because it takes a while for the prices to go down.”

Since the initial U.S.-Israeli attack in late February, Sununu has met in Washington with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, representatives from the Transportation Department and senior White House officials.

A White House official confirmed that Hassett and Sununu have discussed the effect of increased fuel prices on the airline industry. The official said the conversation touched on how the industry can mitigate the impact of high jet fuel prices on consumers.

“The president and his entire energy team anticipated these short-term disruptions to the global energy markets from Operation Epic Fury and had a plan prepared to mitigate these disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said, pointing to the administration’s decision to waive a century-old shipping law in a bid to lower the cost of moving oil.

Rogers said the administration is working with industry representatives to “address their concerns, explore potential actions, and inform the president’s policy decisions.”

A Treasury Department spokesman pointed to Bessent’s recent comments on Fox News that the U.S. economy remains strong despite price increases. The spokesman said Treasury officials have met with airline executives, who have reaffirmed strong ticket bookings.

“We’re cognizant that this short-term move up in prices is affecting the American people, but I am also confident, on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly,” Bessent told Fox News on Monday.

The war has already contributed to one casualty in the industry: Spirit Airlines. Company representatives have said they were forced to close the airline because the sustained surge in jet-fuel prices derailed the company’s plan to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Trump administration and Spirit failed to come to an agreement for the company to receive a financial lifeline of as much as $500 million from the federal government.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has argued that the Iran war wasn’t the cause of Spirit’s demise, pointing to the company’s past financial struggles, as well as the Biden administration’s decision to challenge a merger with JetBlue.

Other budget airlines have also turned to the federal government for help since the U.S.-Israeli attack. A group of budget airlines last month sought $2.5 billion in financial assistance to offset higher fuel costs, and they separately wrote to lawmakers asking for relief from certain ticket taxes.

Populist Right-Wing Parties Lead Polls in Europe’s Biggest Economies

Surge in immigration and weak economic growth spark voter backlash in France, the U.K. and Germany.

Administration officials have spoken to the airline industry, which has voiced concerns about the rising costs.