When Trump won the 2025 US elections, many analysts and outlets saw his victory catalysing a swing to the right among European voters: with right wing leaders and movements across Europe celebrating his win, viewing it as an endorsement of their stances on issues like immigration or climate change, and hoping it would empower their own parties.
By contrast, after the announcement on “Liberation Day” of tariffs on European exports, and the abrasive meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump, others believed there could be a negative effect on right wing parties and an upswing for the left.
However, according to recent research by Brussels-based think tank European Policy Centre – which assessed polling data and political events across Europe before and after Trump’s election – has shown that, actually, Trump is not having an effect on European voting patterns at all.
“At the electoral level, the EU is very independent from the United States. European voting behaviours are mainly influenced by internal factors and do not vary according to American political movements,” said Javier Carbonell, an expert at the EPC and one of the study’s co-authors. This isn’t true in every sector – markets and technological regulations, he said are more closely tied to US dynamics – but “Trump has not altered voting preferences in Europe”.
At the local level
At the local level, support for parties to the right of the European People’s Party group showed very little change between October 2024 and April 2025, according to the study. Most countries, such as Austria, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, maintained steady voter support.
Some countries like the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Italy consistently showed high support for right-wing parties, but this support stayed stable throughout these months. Other countries with lower far-right support, like Sweden, Slovenia, Denmark, and Finland, also didn’t experience significant changes.
Romania was an exception to the rule however, the report’s authors said. “We didn’t include it in the study’s database because there were reliability issues with the electoral data following the annulment of the results,” said Carbonell, citing Romania’s controversially annulled 2024 presidential election.
Overall, across Europe, the average level of voter support for the more right-wing parties stayed around 24-25%, which further suggests that Trump’s victory had minimal local impact.
Meanwhile, public opinion has turned against Trump: according to a survey by Le Grand Continent and Cluster 17, only 6% to 8% of German, Spanish, and French citizens perceive him as an “ally”. And in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Germany and France, the indices tracking US reputation showed decreases of between 20 to 30 percentage points, according to YouGov. This is unsurprising, the study says, claiming Trump’s economic policies are harming voting bases otherwise favourable to right-wing ideas, like those in the Cognac and wine sectors in France and Italy.
Making Europe Great Again?
Attempts to mobilise Trump’s tropes also had limited impact, according to the report. Examples include a “Make Europe Great Again” summit organized by Spain’s Vox in Madrid, or Elon Musk’s interview with AfD’s Alice Weidel.
“These efforts did not fail, but they were counteracted,” according to Carbonell.
“Unlike in Canada, where Trump’s victory did have an impact in the recovery of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party’s decline, European voters act according to internal factors,” Carbonell said.
“Our research indicated that support for right wing and far-right parties in the EU comes from internal factors, which could be: low economic growth, an increase in inequality, cultural changes related to diversity and migration, and strong distrust towards the political system,” said Tabea Schaumann, fellow EPC expert and study co-author. “There’s also backlash against advances in sustainability, feminism, and diversity politics. And every country has its particularities; in Spain, for example, the territorial conflict with Catalonia is an important factor.”
Read the full article here
