Forged in polycrisis: generational dynamics of populist voting in Western Europe

Why do young people appear more likely to support populist parties? Is this primarily a consequence of their life stage, or does it reflect a deeper generational imprint shaped by recent crises? This article examines the relationship between age, cohort, and populist voting across fifteen Western European countries between 2002 and 2024. Using Age-Period-Cohort (APC) models on repeated cross-sectional survey data, we disentangle life-cycle, generational, and period effects. We introduce the concept of the Polycrisis generation, referring to individuals whose political socialization occurred during and after the 2008 economic crisis and who reached early adulthood amid a sequence of overlapping crises. The results indicate that generational effects prevail over life-cycle dynamics, pointing to the emergence of a distinct political generation. Moreover, the populist preferences of this cohort evolved across the polycrisis period: while support initially concentrated on populist radical left parties, it shifted toward the populist radical right after the pandemic. This pattern suggests that younger cohorts engage in a more proactive and context-sensitive approach to party choice. Overall, the study advances a generational perspective on populist voting, showing that the polycrisis may have shaped not only short-term political reactions but also enduring patterns of political behavior.