Why are Green parties polling badly for the European elections? | Green politics
Voters may deal Green parties a blow that costs them up to one-third of their seats, if polls before this week’s European elections prove correct, in a shift that could lead to a rollback of climate policies with the effects rippling far beyond the continent. At first glance, the projected slump in support – which follows months of protests from farmers against environmental rules – reads like a backlash against climate policies set by politicians who tried to move too far, too fast. But political scientists are unconvinced by that narrative. There is little data to support fears of a societal “greenlash” from voters unhappy with the costs of the transition, according to the authors of a recent survey of 15,000 voters in France, Germany and Poland. While local evidence from the Netherlands shows how a specific climate policy can push people away from the Greens and towards the far right, on a broader level researchers have found support for climate policies falls mostly along ideological lines. So what explains the poor polling numbers? The …
