How far is Europe swinging to the far right? Election results in December 2016

Desdemona Despair

By Gregor Aisch, Adam Pearce, and Bryant Rousseau
5 December 2016

(The New York Times) – Amid a migrant crisis, sluggish economic growth and growing disillusionment with the European Union, right-wing parties in a growing number of European countries have made electoral gains. The right-wing parties included below range across a wide policy spectrum, from populist and nationalist to far-right neofascist. This chart show election results in 20 European countries, with right-wing populist and far-right parties highlighted in red. […]

Poland

Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice party roared back into the government by winning 39 percent of the national vote in the 2015 parliamentary elections.

The party was founded in 2001 by Lech Kaczynski and his identical twin, Jaroslaw. Law and Justice first won power in 2005. Lech became president and Jaroslaw, eventually, his prime minister.

In 2010, Lech Kaczynski and much of Poland’s top leadership died in a plane crash while landing at an airport near Smolensk, Russia. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who was not on the plane, is now leading Poland’s shift rightward as the party leader. Hungary

Viktor Orban and his right-wing Fidesz party, running on a joint list with the K.D.N.P., a Christian Democratic party, have won the last two parliamentary elections in Hungary, worrying many Western leaders about his increasingly authoritarian rule. The party also decisively won in voting for the European Parliament in May 2014.

Jobbik, a far-right, anti-immigration, populist and economic protectionist party,won 20 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections in 2014, making it Hungary’s third-largest party.

Itspolicy platform includes holding a referendum on membership in the European Union and a call to “stop hushing up such taboo issues” as “the Zionist Israel’s efforts to dominate Hungary and the world.” [more]

How Far Is Europe Swinging to the Right?