Voters who view immigration as the biggest crisis mostly back rightwing parties such as the National Rally in France or Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD); those who prioritise the climate tend to support green or leftist parties such as Spain’s Socialists or Poland’s Left.
This seems like a misrepresentation. It is not as if the followers of right-wing parties see the climate crisis as the smaller problem, they usually outright deny its existence and want to sabotage any attempts to limit its impact by actively favouring fossil fuels and other technologies harmful for the climate.
Maybe that differs per culture, but here in the Netherlands I know plenty of right-wing voters who don’t deny the issue at all. They acknowledge it’s a problem, sometimes even want to put effort into fixing it. Their arguments against are usually “we’re such a small country, so whatever we do won’t really affect anything anyway” and “it’s already going quite well, no need to be ahead of the curve”. I’d say that’s actually by far the largest group of right wing voters in my personal experience.
Now personally I don’t agree with them of course. Yes we’re a small country, but als relatively rich and relatively bad for the climate. Also, adding all small countries together still adds up to a big amount of emissions. If all small countries would reason like this nothing would happen. And we’re not exactly ahead of the curve either, even though we’re relatively rich.
We had more of that here in Germany maybe 10 years ago, the people wouldn’t claim we are that small but the closely related argument that we are already doing more than the US and China and they are so much larger than us. Today there is more denial but also more of that “we are for everything that is against what the Greens want” attitude.
Maybe that differs per culture, but here in the Netherlands I know plenty of right-wing voters who don’t deny the issue at all. They acknowledge it’s a problem, sometimes even want to put effort into fixing it. Their arguments against are usually “we’re such a small country, so whatever we do won’t really affect anything anyway” and “it’s already going quite well, no need to be ahead of the curve”. I’d say that’s actually by far the largest group of right wing voters in my personal experience.
It is not just happening in the Netherlands, I can see it in Germany too and there is this study that found it all over Youtube. It is the same group and the same denial, just their agenda framed differently, because they could not win over people with right out denying climate change anymore. They just switched the narrative to “can’t do anything against it” :
The report published on Tuesday shows a shift from the “old denial” – that climate change is not happening or not anthropogenic – to the “new denial”.
These new denial narratives that question the science and solutions for climate change constituted 35% of all climate denial on YouTube in 2018, but now represent the large majority (70%). Over the same period, the share of old denial has dropped from 65% to 30% of total claims.
The report authors believe that this shift is because the scientific evidence is now more accepted and hard to dispute, so those aiming to win people over to climate denial and delay must discredit the solutions and people pushing for climate action.
In a proper democracy some of these tribes wouldn’t exist because all voters would be educated and have proper information about the state of the world and would vote based on what they think is the correct way forward, not based on irrational fears.
Doesn’t really work if one of the tribes is fundamentally about denying human rights to a specific group of people. Any compromise with that position is already accepting that position as viable. Also the right outright denies the problem of climate change all together - and therefore are not interested in any compromise about something they don’t believe exists, too.
The left and center parties can still work together but sadly the right has drifted too far away from what reasonable positions that you can compromise with are.
You don’t need unanimous decision making, as long as people’s voices are represented. But I do indeed hope that a large majority of people will always refuse to compromise on denying human rights to specific groups of people.
Democracy only works if people are more or less on the same page about reality - since than they can find a conses or compromise. If people can’t agree on the nature of reality (is climate change real, is there a problem with immigration, are viruses even real? ) than democracy can do nothing, since there is no way to bridge that differences in a peaceful manner.
That is another sign of a well-functioning democracy, indeed.
The five tribes identified are not present in each country, but rather it is a regional split according to which topic is dominating the current political debate.
In Southern Europe it is economic turmoil, in eastern Europe it is Russian agression, in some areas of western and central Europe it is climate change and in other areas it is migration. Finally there is the Covid, which is an issue in all countries.
Yeah I mean, all tribes that are present among the voting populace should be represented. (I was mainly just making a dig at the US’s two-party system :P )
And in a proper democracy, each citizen votes directly on matters.
Someone who represents only some of your views cannot effectively act as your representative.
Mir si im momänt grad chli unbeliebt, darum wei sis nid ghöre… aber säubschtverständlech hesch rächt
So they didn’t ask
Which issue is most concerning to you?
But asked instead
Which of the following issues has, over the past decade, most changed the way you look at your future?
If someone has been most concerned about some issue for decades, they wouldn’t necessarily give it as an answer to the second question.
Kinda surprising Palestine isn’t one of them.
Only my perspective, but Palestine while certainly an issue, it’s not as big an issue as in the US. The EU did not park an aircraft carrier on the shore of Gaza to support Israel, and while policy positions slide back and forth, the initial response was mostly a call for ceasefire. The US is the sole country that has been consistently supporting Israel.
Ukraine is a much bigger thing because of its proximity and because we back a horse in the race. And neither of them are as big as housing or cost of living or climate change, apparently.
I see. Yeah that makes sense.
I guess the study was started before the Israel Palestine conflict emerged.
Interesting split. In my case, the biggest issue is the cost of living, including the housing crisis, so I guess “economic turmoil”?
Nope, if housing and cost of living is an actual problem for you, you’re obviously too poor to be relevant to The Economy™ and its turmoils.
Not in my opinion, “economic turmoil” is if you are worried that speculative gambling numbers are too low so the poor serial investors will miss out on short term profits and if you are worried that taxes on people making over 10 million a year are rising to a small fraction of what the poor have to pay. That’s “the economy”
I don’t think the housing crisis and cost of living crisis is even represented in many goverments outside of pan-party press talking points to appease “the poors” that are worried about it while doing little to nothing.
Some people believe Covid is the most important topic in this election? I’d say that is practically over. What concerns these citizens??
Presumably the problems in health care systems shown by Covid, Long Covid and of course new variants affecting people with compromised immune systems.
I’d say that is practically over
The problem is that the media and political class has conspired to make you think that. It is most definitely not “over”. Not as a live pandemic, and not as the aftermath ie long covid, lost school years, etc. It’s like if in 2009 people said the financial crisis was over.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The polling suggests 2024’s European parliament and national elections will be fought over attitudes to five major crises that have affected voters’ lives in recent years: the climate emergency, the 2015 migration crisis, global economic turmoil, the war in Ukraine and Covid.
The report’s authors argue that all five of these crises “were felt across Europe, although to varying intensities in different corners of the continent; experienced as an existential threat by many Europeans; dramatically affected government policies – and are by no means over”.
Ivan Krastev of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, said the study showed that in terms of how they saw the EU, citizens were “drifting away from the ideological bonds of right and left” and were instead swayed more by their views of these crises.
Dutch voters placed Geert Wilders’ anti-immigrant Freedom party (PVV) top of the poll, with the pro-environment Green-Labour alliance headed by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans finishing second.
The survey – of nine EU member states representing 75% of the bloc’s population, plus Great Britain and Switzerland – suggested that 73.4 million European voters believed the climate emergency was the single most important crisis affecting their future.
In Italy and Portugal, both of which were badly affected by the 2008 financial crash and ensuing eurozone crisis, a plurality (34%) of respondents said worldwide economic turmoil and the rising cost of living were paramount among their concerns.
The original article contains 965 words, the summary contains 239 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
And in proper democracies, all of these tribes are represented in parliament and make policy together.
