Much of the media attention around the results of the German Election has focused on the strong result achieved by the nationalist right in the form of the Alternativ fur Deutschland, which secured a historic vote of more than 20%, and has emerged as the clear second party in German politics.
While this result is certainly worthy of comment, another almost as important trend has gone almost un-noticed. Though not by GB News’s Tom Harwood, who is a sharp observer of polling trends:
More than one in three young German female voters cast their ballots for “Die Linke”, which even somebody with no German can probably translate as simply meaning “The Left”. What most non-German speakers probably do not know is just how radical that party is.
It campaigned, amongst other things, for the following policies on immigration alone: It sought an end to immigration control of any kind. It wished to extend full voting rights to all those resident in Germany, regardless of legal status or heritage. It wanted strict quotas for people of migrant heritage in public office and public administration. It wished to end all deportations. It wished to establish “a commissioner for muslim life in Germany” that would make Germany more hospitable for those of the Islamic faith. It wanted Germany to automatically issue entry and residence visas to any applying person from a country that it deems affected by Climate Change. It is not unfair to say that in essence, the party campaigned for the abolition of Germany’s borders entirely, in every respect other than the fact that those borders would remain theoretical lines on a map.
And for this, along with the usual radical stuff about abolishing capitalism, promoting transgenderism and LGBT rights, and everything else that you could take directly from a People before Profit manifesto here in Ireland, the party achieved fully 34% of the votes of young women.
In fact, young women voted 33% more to the left than their young male counterparts, whose votes were largely in line with the rest of the population, with the AFD only slightly more popular with young men than they were with Germans as a whole.
This radicalisation of young women to the political left is not new, but it is becoming ever more pronounced right across western society. In France, for example, at the most recent parliamentary elections, a massive chunk of votes for the radical left came from the youngest female voters. In the USA, 56% of young men chose Trump, but fully 60% of young women voted for Harris. In Ireland, it has long been an established trend that votes for parties like the Social Democrats and People before Profit come in significant numbers from the youngest female voters.
Why? And why is this left-wing radicalisation of young women happening concurrently with a similar (though less dramatic) shift right amongst young men? Answers on a postcard please.
I have some theories, though.
First, the “new right”, for want of a better term, is exceptionally masculine in both demeanour and vibes. Think here of the simple stuff – Hulk Hogan being cheered to the rafters at the Republican convention – and the less simple stuff, like the number of young right-leaning blokes who profess to admire chaps like Conor McGregor and Andrew Tate, neither of them exactly paragons of virtue in the eyes of young women.
Culturally, the new right often appears to be trying to be as woman-repellent as possible. I think here of the emergence of the “tradwife” trend on social media, which markets itself as a message to young women that true happiness comes from marriage, children, and a life at home cooking for your man. In actual fact, a lot of this stuff is directed at men, telling them what an ideal woman would look like.
I could write more on this, but at the risk of alienating the audience, let’s just say that there are “push” factors driving young women away from the “new right”.
There are also “pull” factors pulling them hard to the left. In economic terms, young women in the west, regardless of social background, are often the poorest citizens. The economic model demands that they work, but they are more limited in career paths than young men since few of them are likely to make the cut as a plumber or a carpenter – career paths that remain lucrative but disproportionately favour blokes. Parties that promise explicitly to take money from others and re-distribute it have a fertile ground in the young female constituency.
Then there is sex. By which I mean both the activity, and the politics of it. The new right tends to focus a lot of attention on sexual threats posed to young women by migrant males in particular, and to position themselves as their protector. But that is not the reality that most young women experience. In their experience, most of the sexual threat to them comes from the men they encounter every day: The clumsy, sweaty suitor. The “friend” who suddenly reveals he has more designs than he admitted. The porn-addled boyfriend. The pervy professor. The uncle who hugs them for a few seconds longer than strictly necessary.
Put simply, young women’s experiences often accord more accurately with the “yes all men” approach to sexual politics than the “we must protect our womenkind from these African migrants” approach to sexual politics. The left’s language accords more with their actual experiences than that of the right.
And there’s a final point: The left often talks to young women, while the right talks about young women. On all of these topics.
It is not a coincidence I think that Die Linke spent most of the election campaign just gone talking almost endlessly about how it would ferociously oppose the AFD. That was, everything else aside, its number one topic: Stopping the “far right”.
In so doing, it appealed dramatically to young women.
The right, moving forward, might like to reflect on why that line of attack is so potent with that particular constituency. I suspect, however, that it will not.