Three Election Lessons for Americans
A growing share of voters disillusioned with the status quo. A democratic system tested by expansive foreign attempts to interfere. Seemingly unending political turmoil. These elements should sound familiar to anyone paying attention to US politics. But they also describe the state of play leading up to last month’s European Parliament (EP) election and the French parliamentary vote.
The robust democracies on both sides of the Atlantic, which share interests and values, face comparable political challenges. Americans, therefore, cannot afford to ignore lessons that Europe’s recent elections offer.
The first lesson is that politicians underestimate the depth of voter discontent at their own peril. Many European voters prioritized growing discontent with the status quo over democratic considerations. The EU races occurred at a time of high and growing popular discontent with the status quo. Under the shadow of a protracted war in Ukraine, economic malaise remains deeply rooted as societies suffer from sluggish growth and a continuing cost-of-living crisis. Topics such as immigration—the campaign issue for Europe’s far-right parties—touched a political nerve, in part due to their perceived links to unaddressed bread-and-butter issues such as stinging inflation and stubborn unemployment. This fueled further disillusionment with the establishment. The similarities to the US political climate are evident.
To many European voters, the potential chilling effect on democratic institutions by the far right, which for decades was relegated to the political fringes and shunned for its extremist agendas and rhetoric, seemed to matter less than the simple answers these parties give to real anxieties and complex problems. In Austria and Germany, extreme right-wing parties that defined themselves on ethno-nationalist, nativist, or xenophobic grounds cruised to first or second place in the EP election, despite the absence of a reliable commitment to democratic principles such as respecting pluralism or the rule of law. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party crushed President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party in the EU election by essentially turning the vote into a referendum on an unpopular administration. Concern about the RN’s democratic credentials did not resonate with party supporters, whose grievances with the status quo remained their primary consideration several weeks later, when they returned to the polls for a national parliamentary election. The RN may have failed to gain power after that election’s second round, but it managed to garner more than 37% of the vote, its highest ever, and confirmed its nationwide foothold.
A second vital lesson from the EP election is that swift action should be taken to blunt the impact of foreign interference and deter future such efforts since they represent a threat to election integrity. European countries saw a spate of related scandals thrust into the public eye, giving a small taste of how systematic these offensives against democracies are. In March, Czech authorities disbanded a Russian propaganda network that reportedly used “Voice of Europe”, a pro-Moscow website, to pay politicians from several European countries to disseminate pro-Kremlin narratives about Ukraine and influence public opinion before the EP election. This was followed by accusations that the top two candidates of the far-right Alternative for Germany party in the EP election were involved in cash-for-influence schemes emanating from Russia and/or China. On top of all this, a European External Action Service report called out a Russian disinformation campaign, dubbed Doppelganger, for “promoting Russian narratives to disrupt and interfere with the [EP] electoral process”. And, in the lead-up to the election, a number of European leaders echoed that message, including outgoing EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and then-Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who launched a separate probe into suspected Russian interference into the bloc’s elections.
Europe’s experience clearly shows that these malign actions demand meaningful responses. When plots are uncovered, those behind them should be named, shamed, and prosecuted.
As for the EP election itself, it went off without a hitch despite all the threats. Some 373 million citizens could vote in parallel processes in the 27 EU member states, one of the world’s largest and most complex democratic exercises, which proved robust and resilient. Turnout was the highest in 30 years, and the legitimacy of the process was never in doubt. Therein lies the third lesson to Americans: European voters demonstrated that belief in any party can stand side by side with belief in election integrity.
For the United States, approaching its own general election, the European experience offers evidence that polarization, declining institutional trust, and foreign interference are challenges that can be overcome to ensure a free and fair vote. As foreign actors seek to interfere and influence, vigilance is called for. But a focus also needs to be on offering real solutions to voters’ disillusionment to prevent them from running into the arms of anti-democratic politicians. Europeans have just made that clear. American policymakers and voters intent on upholding US democracy should listen.