The change voters seek goes beyond the left-right divide

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Many analysts assert that the rise of populist, right-wing movements are threatening democracy. But based on my recent travels overseas from the Middle East to western and central Europe, I believe that the election results reflect not so much a popular swing to the right, but rather, a growing frustration with incumbent governments.

True, the populist right has made inroads. Europe’s first populist pioneer, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, has won four consecutive elections as prime minister since his initial victory in 2010. Since then, he has transformed Hungary into what he has called an "illiberal democracy," but what the European Parliament has denounced as an "electoral autocracy."

In Italy in 2022, the right-wing populist Brothers of Italy won the highest vote share of any single part in the nation’s national election, propelling to power as prime minister its leader, Giorgia Meloni. In those national elections, four-in-ten Italian voters cast their ballots not just for the Brothers, but for the other two major right-wing parties, Forza Italia and Lega, up a third from the last election in 2018.

In sanctimoniously liberal Sweden, the right-wing Sweden Democrats emerged in 2022 as the second most popular party, the culmination of steady growth over the last six parliamentary elections and the near doubling of their vote