The last time elections for the European Parliament were held, the vote was dismissed by many as a sleepy, low-stakes affair. This time around, it’s an entirely different landscape.
T-shirts are placed on chairs before a Brexit Party rally in London on May 21, 2019. More than 425 million Europeans from 28 countries are to head to the polls this week to choose their representatives at the European Parliament for the next five years.
Another factor in the populists’ favor: Turnout in the European Parliament vote tends to be relatively low, a boon for movements with a fired-up base and a laser focus on a few specific issues, such as migration or skepticism toward the EU. The Brexit party, created to drive home the demand to carry out the 2016 vote to depart the bloc, has a substantial lead over the ruling Conservative and opposition Labor parties in the European election contest. The anti-Brexit vote was significant, polls suggested, but split among several parties.
Led by Italy’s hard-line deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, the group denounced “out-of-control” immigration — even though numbers of migrants arriving in Europe have dropped off dramatically since 2015, which saw a surge in arrivals from war-torn Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Salvini and his would-be coalition partners have seized upon the notion that immigrants, especially from Muslim countries, pose a threat to “European” culture — often used in that context as a code word for Christianity.Even from across the Atlantic, President Trump is an unseen presence in the vote, some analysts said. He hosted Orban in the Oval Office last week, and as a candidate, he was an enthusiastic proponent of Brexit.
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