The kids are Alt right? Age, authoritarian attitudes and far-right support in Europe

The traditional image of a far-right voter as ‘pale, male and stale’ is changing. The attention has shifted to younger people who are said to be less supportive of (liberal) democracy and now also more likely to vote for the far-right. But evidence has been mixed when it comes to how age is associated with attitudes towards liberal democracy and support for far-right parties. In this paper, we rely on unique cross-national data from the European Parliament elections, the European Elections Study (EES) 2024, to shed light on this relationship. We find that young people are not only less supportive of liberal democracy, they were also more likely to vote for far-right parties in the 2024 European Parliament elections. In each age group, we observe a correlation between lack of support for liberal democratic norms and voting for the far right, but only when the far right is in government. These findings thus suggest that the younger generation may not be a bulwark against democratic backsliding.