The deprived have voted

‘Island of wealth’ versus regions of destitution

Romania provides an example of how the far right is increasingly able to gain power by targeting Europe’s marginalised, impoverished regions. The presidential election last May saw the far-right candidate George Simion gain 46.4 per cent of the vote, but narrowly lose to the current president, Nicușor Dan, a Liberal. Dan did particularly well in the capital, Bucharest, where economic output per capita is fifty per cent higher than the EU average. As political scientist Vladimir Borțun puts it in an interview with german-foreign-policy.com just under a year ago, the capital city can be seen “an island of wealth” in Romania, which is third-poorest country in the EU. Its rural regions are characterised by abject poverty and a desperate lack of prospects. The anger there towards the well-heeled elites in the capital drove swathes of voters towards the far right in the parliamentary election. Borțun also attributes this shift to the fact that there is currently no credible left-wing party in Romania that might convincingly stand up for the material interests of these broad sections of the population.[1] Simion’s party, the AUR (Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor, Alliance for the Union of Romanians), is able to attract votes through its anti-establishment rhetoric, even though, as Borțun points out, the party really represents the interests of the national bourgeoisie.

‘The nation’s gold’

The far right is now becoming increasingly entrenched in in Romanian society. Since the presidential election in May 2025, Simion’s AUR party has consistently ranked first in opinion surveys, with around 35 to 38 per cent of the vote. It is also instructive to look at the voting preferences of the Romanian diaspora living in Germany. Among the more than 900,000 Romanians registered as resident in the Federal Republic, only a small minority work in better-paid professions, including around 4,700 doctors.[2] The vast majority have to make do with a meagre income from often tough jobs, such working as in slaughterhouses, on farms at harvest time, or on building sites. Many of them have to set aside money for their families in Romania to alleviate crushing poverty back home. The relative deprivation of Romanian workers in Germany is confirmed by statistics from the Information Service of the German Economic Institute (idw), as reported by german-foreign-policy.com.[3] The AUR party’s agitation against the country’s elites is also designed to attract the diaspora: the Romanian word ‘aur’ – identical to the party’s abbreviation AUR – means ‘gold’. Borțun notes that this pun is used to suggest to the Romanian diaspora: “You are the nation’s gold”. This appeal to the underprivileged is, like much of the messaging, meaningless in terms of the wealth inequality within the Romania.[4] Yet, amongst the largely underpaid and overworked Romanians living in Germany, the AUR was able to secure 67 per cent of the vote in the May presidential election last year.

Impoverished and abandoned working-class areas

Another example comes from the UK. There, on 7 May, the far-right party Reform UK won 28.7 per cent of the total 5,066 council seats up for election in many parts of the country, becoming by far the strongest party at that level. The huge swing was enabled by Reform making an unprecedented breakthrough not only in typically conservative rural regions but also in impoverished and economically marginalised traditional working-class neighbourhoods, especially in the north of England. People in these communities have suffered disproportionately from the dismantling of the welfare state and feel that their interests are no longer represented by any of the parties of power. As recently as the 2017 general election, Labour, under then-leader Jeremy Corbyn, had been able to win over the traditional working-class areas of northern England by a wide margin on the basis of a left-wing programme. With Corbyn’s decline, in part engineered by a right-wing party establishment behind Keir Starmer, these working-class areas were lost in quick succession. Labour was later thrashed in local elections. Take the case of Sunderland, a formerly industrial city in the north-east of England where Reform UK has secured 58 out of 75 seats on the city council. In that contest, Labour plummeted from 54 to five seats. Similar results were observed in various other former industrial areas such as South Tyneside and Salford.

High levels of poverty, low life expectancy

The German state of Saxony-Anhalt has also come to fit this pattern. The region was largely deindustrialised from the 1990s after West Germany absorbed the GDR. East German enterprises were taken over wholesale by western capital. Even competitive ones were forced out of the market, while the uncompetitive went bankrupt. To this day, leading positions in politics, business and culture in eastern Germany are typically held by people from western Germany. According to statistics from the Paritätischer Gesamtverband (a federation of German welfare associations), Saxony-Anhalt has the second-highest rate of poverty (after Bremen) among the sixteen federal states. According to figures issued by the Saxony-Anhalt Ministry of Social Affairs, 21.3 per cent of the population are at risk of poverty and social exclusion. This is the third-highest figure nationwide.[5] The average gross annual income there in 2025 was 51,937 euros, which is lower than in all other states, the national average being 64,441 euros. At just over 8.2 per cent, the state’s unemployment rate is also high by national comparison.[6] Younger people – particularly those who are well-educated and have decent career prospects – have been leaving the region in droves. This leaves Saxony-Anhalt with the highest average age in Germany, at 48.3 years. At the same time, it has the lowest life expectancy, put at 76.4 years for men, with women doing much better at 82.6 years.[7]

Exclusion, not redistribution

In Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD secured a huge 43.8 per cent of the vote, making it by far the strongest party, ahead of the CDU with just 17.2 per cent. The party did particularly well among people in financial hardship. Some 65 per cent of this segment voted for the far-right party.[8] The AfD received 57 per cent of the vote from people with a low level of education. It is a demographic that has particularly poor prospects under prevailing socio-economic conditions. Around 59 per cent of all manual workers cast their vote for the AfD. At the same time, 52 per cent of all self-employed people voted for the AfD, a party which has particularly strong roots in the small and medium-sized business sector (as reported by german-foreign-policy.com [9]). Indeed, the party still has a primary focus on the interests of small and medium-sized enterprises. Last but not least is the gender factor: the AfD received the votes of 50 per cent of all male voters, but only 39 per cent of women. There are indications that, in times of crisis, men in male-dominated societies are more inclined to seek solutions to their problems by resorting to the exclusion of minorities and to violence.

Redistribution, not exclusion

Graz, Austria’s second-largest city, offers an important counter-example to the increasingly prevalent right-wing trend. In that city, the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) secured 21.1 per cent of the vote in the Styrian state election on 24 November 2024, making it the second-strongest party. At local government level, however, the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) has grown in strength and influence over recent decades. In Graz it has consistently championed the interests of the underprivileged, focusing strongly on social issues. The KPÖ has become a credible alternative to the parties of the ruling elites. In the most recent local council election, on 28 June 2026, it gained the most votes for the second time in a row. Under communist mayor Elke Kahr, it increased its share of the vote from 28.8 to 35.7 per cent. The FPÖ, by contrast, slumped to 12.0 per cent, falling well short of the targets it had been able to reach in the 2024 state election. The far-right share of the vote has almost halved.

[1] See: Romania’s far right and Unter deutscher Dominanz.

[2], [3] See: Rumäniens „Bekenntnis zu Europa“.

[4] See: Romania’s far right and Unter deutscher Dominanz.

[5] Sachsen-Anhalter besonders stark von Armut und sozialer Ausgrenzung bedroht. mdr.de 25.03.2026.

[6] Maximilian Kettenbach: Gehalt, Lebenserwartung, Schulabbrecher – die desaströsen Zahlen aus Sachsen-Anhalt. fr.de 06.09.2026.

[7] Altersstruktur der Bevölkerung in Sachsen-Anhalt. demografie-portal.de.

[8] Wer wählte wen in Sachsen-Anhalt? tagesschau.de 06.09.2026.

[9] See: Brüche im Establishment (II) and Brüche im Establishment (III).