Global Populism Is Rising, Not Waning

Right-populist parties and movements continue to gain strength. How might these trends affect U.S. Democrats in upcoming elections?

Democrats are cautiously optimistic about November’s midterms as President Trump’s poor job approval numbers and continued success in flipping GOP seats in special elections suggest victory is forthcoming. They ought not to take too much comfort in that, as these points do not show that conservative populism’s appeal is waning. In fact, the evidence from overseas suggests it is still growing.

Japan

Japan’s most recent national election is a case in point. Just last July, the long-dominant, conventionally conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its majority in the nation’s upper house, the House of Counsellors. The big winners were not the traditional centrist opposition, but instead two conservative populist parties, Sanseitō and the Conservative Party, which skyrocketed to take nearly 18 percent of the vote together. Prime Minister Shigero Ishiba resigned to take responsibility for the fall from grace.

He was replaced by Japan’s first female prime minister, Sagae Takaichi. She cites Britain’s Margaret Thatcher as an inspiration for her career, but as PM, she is more like a Japanese Trump than anything else. Sharply conservative on social issues like same-sex marriage (she’s opposed), she has embraced a rapid rebuilding of Japan’s military and angered China with statements that that country’s use of its navy to blockade Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” that would trigger laws allowing the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to intervene.

Takaichi also takes a hard line on immigration, pledging to tighten immigration procedures and perhaps even establish a numerical target for the amount of foreign-born people allowed to live in Japan. Combined, these policies moved the LDP sharply to the nationalist right, the better to compete with Sanseitō and the Conservatives.

Last month’s snap election for the lower house, the House of Representatives, was a smashing success for her conservative populism. The LDP won a record 315 seats in the 465-seat chamber. The conservative populists, nonetheless, won 10 percent combined, a record showing for populist hard-right parties in a lower house election. It’s clear Japan now stands firmly in the conservative populist camp.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is another example of record high support for conservative populism. The longtime democracy has historically tilted toward the center-left, as the National Liberation Party (PLN) won nearly two-thirds of the nation’s elections between 1953 and 2010. Even the PLN’s defeats in 2014 and 2018 came as a result of another party of the center-left, the Citizen’s Action Party (PAC), taking over first place.

This started to change in 2022, as an entirely new party, the Social Democratic Progress Party (PPSD), elected a president on the strength of concern about unemployment and immigration. That man, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, was extremely controversial during his tenure and avoided criminal prosecution only because the opposition could not muster the two-thirds needed to lift his immunity.

Unable to run again because of constitutional bars on consecutive terms in office, it remained for one of Chaves’ ministers, Laura Fernandes Delgado, to carry on his legacy. She argued in the campaign to build a prison like the one constructed by El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to control the country’s soaring crime and to crack down on drug trafficking. Fernandes is also socially conservative, pledging to increase penalties for having an abortion and reaching out to the nation’s large and growing evangelical voters.

Costa Ricans gave her and her party, a split from the PPSD known as the Sovereign People’s Party (PPSO), a historic landslide. She won in the first round with nearly a majority of the votes. Moreover, the PPSO won 31 of the unicameral legislature’s 57 seats, the first time a single party had won a majority since 1990. The nation’s traditional center-right and classical liberal parties mustered only one seat combined.

France

A recent legislative by-election in France further shows how the traditional right is crumbling in the face of populist fervor. The 3d district of Haute-Savoie had always been won by a candidate from the traditional center-right parties since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958. The center-right won handily even in 2024’s snap vote, which saw the populist right National Rally (RN) surge in support. The center-right candidate, Christelle Petex, beat the RN-supported candidate, Antoine Valentin, comfortably by a 56-44 margin as voters to her left swung to her side in the all-important second-round runoff.

Petex’s resignation set off the by-election, which was held on January 25th and February 1st. RN backed Valentin again, but this time two even farther-right parties, Reconquête and Les Patriotes, put up their own nominees. Valentin nonetheless finished on top in the first round with 45 percent, about 5.5 percent higher than he received in 2024. The two ultra-rightists combined for an additional 4 percent, putting Valentin on the cusp of victory simply by combining the record high far-right vote.

Valentin did even better than that, swamping the center-right candidate, Christophe Fournier, by a landslide 59-41 margin. That was a 30-point swing from 2024, on par with the 32-point swing in the recent Texas state Senate election that has Democrats salivating. France’s conservatives, like Japan’s and Costa Rica’s, are swinging hard right, and the nation’s centrists and leftists seem powerless to stop them.

Australia

Populism’s rapid rise has even spread Down Under to Australia. That country has long had a center-right coalition of the Liberal and National parties that essentially occupied all of the space on the right side of the spectrum. That has begun to fray over the last decade, but the Coalition still dominated the right even in 2025’s historic landslide defeat. It received about 32 percent of the primary vote (the nation has mandatory ranked-choice voting), while the largest populist right party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, got only 6.4 percent.

That is now ancient history. The Coalition now polls at record lows on the primary vote, ranging between 19 and 26 percent in the most recent polls. One Nation has surged and now polls higher than the Coalition, receiving between 22 and 28 percent. It got so bad that the Liberals, the long-dominant party in the Coalition, recently dumped its leader, Sussan Ley, even though she had only held the job for nine months.

One Nation’s rise is easy to explain. Hanson is a longtime political figure known for her nationalist and anti-immigrant views who is credible as a principled outsider. That appeals to disaffected conservatives tired of the Coalition’s losing and temporizing on hot-button issues. Her fiscal nonconformity and plain-speaking approach also appeal to working-class voters disappointed in the governing center-left Labor Party. That ability to attract both left and right is a staple of successful conservative populists worldwide.

The most recent Sky News Pulse/YouGov poll shows this clearly. It found that 12 percent of Labor Party voters now back One Nation, along with 29 percent of the Coalition’s support and 21 percent who had backed independents. It leads Labor with working-class voters, once the very reason for Labor’s existence, and is competitive with both traditional major parties among the middle class. Only the well-off reject populism—another feature of modern global politics—but they are largely concentrated in a few urban and suburban enclaves. If the election were held today, One Nation would easily supplant the Coalition in Parliament as the largest party on the right and would likely win a few surprising working-class Labor seats too.

United Kingdom

Even the populist right’s recent defeat in the avidly watched Gorton and Denton by-election in Great Britain is a sign of strength rather than weakness. The seat has one of Britain’s largest Muslim populations, a constituency that is clearly antagonistic to the anti-immigration, pro-Western culture populist party. It was also historically one of the most left-wing seats in the nation, regularly returning Labour Party MPs since 1935 with huge majorities.

Reform’s second-place finish with 29 percent of the vote is, in this context, a huge success. Nowcast UK’s model estimated it would receive 26.5 percent, with the Conservatives winning 4.5 percent. In the event, the combined Reform plus Tory vote share of 30.6 percent is nearly identical to the model’s. And that model projects that Reform would win 315 seats in the next election, easily enough to form a coalition government with the much smaller rump of Conservatives.

When the best election result for the left in recent days still points to a conservative populist government, one must sit up and face the facts. Trump may be in decline at the moment, but demand for conservative populism is strong and growing. If he ever hits his stride, perhaps by focusing on domestic politics rather than endlessly pursuing the Nobel Peace Prize, Democrats may find their current advantage is as durable as a snowpack come springtime.