The popularity of left-wing parties around the world is reaching an all-time low, according to a survey by the British newspaper The Telegraph. Comparing statistics and election results in 73 countries around the world, it concludes that left-leaning factions are more unpopular today than at any time since the end of the Cold War (1947-1991).

The analysis comes after a year of electoral triumphs for Conservatives around the world, capped by the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.

Parties aligned to the Right hold the lead, with more than 1.5 billion people in over 70 countries voting for them in 2024, the most recorded in a single year. Left-wing parties suffered a record low average vote share of just 45.4% in the last election in each country, according to the Telegraph’s analysis of elections in 73 countries with democratic regimes.

In Western Europe and the US, left-wing parties secured just 42.3% of the vote, while the right won 55.7%, achieving the largest gap in vote share since 1990. Meanwhile, the far-right scored a record 14.7% vote share, thanks to its…disturbingly good performance in elections from France to Panama.

The decline of the left can even be seen in Latin America, a bastion of socialism after years of violent, fascist dictatorships. Indeed, following the inauguration of Donald Trump this month (next Monday), new defeats for the left in Canada, Australia and Germany, the EU’s largest economy, are on the political horizon.

What analysts say

“The trend (of the right) is upward. There is no real reason to expect it to stop anytime soon,” Professor Matthijs Rooduijn, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam, told The-Telegraph. Jeremy Cliffe, editorial director and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said the global shift to the right is the result of three interrelated trends: The globalization-driven decline of organized labor, the phenomenon of “identity politics”, which is being exploited more successfully by the right than by the left, and the general tendency of left forces to fragment rather than unite.

In the US, Trump won the popular vote in last November’s election, receiving 77,000,000 votes to Democrat Kamala Harris’ 75,000,000 votes. In Canada, polls show that Pierre Poulyevre, nicknamed “The Trump of Canada”, is the favourite to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister. In Australia, the Conservatives have moved ahead of the Labor government in polls ahead of the election, which will be held in 2025.

The picture in Europe

At the same time, the right-wing parties in Europe have “opened up” a near-historic lead over their left-wing rivals of close to 14% in the most recent polls on the Old Continent. Labour’s sweeping victory in the UK was the only…consolation for the left in a 12-month period of failure. Again, however, the smiles are not expected to last long, as the first YouGov/Times survey of voting intentions after the 2024 general election shows a neck-and-neck race between Labour (26%) and Reform UK (25%). The Conservative Party is in third place with 22%.

In Western Europe, the alt-right has been…smashing, averaging a record 16.9% of the vote in France, Austria, Germany and elsewhere. Voters across the EU handed victory to centre-right parties in last June’s European elections, but the Alternative for Germany (AfD), France’s National Coalition and Austria’s Freedom Party also made big gains.

In France, Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call early elections after Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won the country’s European elections left French politics in disarray and effectively rendered Macron himself powerless. The National Rally was prevented from seizing power thanks to the coalition of all left-wing parties. But Le Pen’s party is the largest in the French parliament and brought down Barnier’s minority government in just three months.

In Austria, the far-right pro-Putin Freedom Party won its first parliamentary election and is now expected to form a coalition government. In Germany, the conservative CDU is expected to win the parliamentary elections next February. The AfD is in second place in the polls, ahead of Olaf Scholz’s unpopular left-wing Social Democratic Party. Last year, the AfD won state elections, the first far-right party to do so in Germany since World War II and the fall of the German Nazi party.

2024 was the worst year for left-wing parties in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Iron Curtain. The centre-right won in Croatia and Bulgaria. The far right won the now annulled elections in Romania. In the Czech Republic, Andrej Babic, a populist businessman and Trump admirer, is expected to win the election this year, leading by at least 14 points in the most recent polls. Experts say the Right’s success is due to hardening attitudes towards illegal immigration in Europe. At the same time, hard right politicians are gaining more access and their messages are achieving greater resonance in society through social media – a possibility they did not have in the past.

“Collapsing” historical bastions in Latin America

At the same time, the Left’s stranglehold on the Latin American political scene since the late 2000s has been weakened, following victories by leaders such as Argentina’s Javier Milei. After the 2024 elections, the Left’s vote share was 51.6% – that is, the lowest in more than 30 years. At the same time, the average right-wing vote held at 40% since 2018. In 2023, Paraguay elected conservative Santiago Peña and Ecuador chose center-right candidate Daniel Noboa. That same year, the eccentric Milei became president of Argentina with promises of public sector cuts. He will face midterm elections in 2025, but so far his party is performing well in the polls.

According to Dr. Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow in the Latin America, US and Americas program at Chatham House, left-wing parties have seen their vote share decline as a result of government incompetence, excessive promises and corruption. “Over the past two decades, voter concerns about crime and violence have skyrocketed… This is one area where the left has failed to produce much of an impact or a sustainable response,” he told the Telegraph.

Jair Bolsonaro – the “Trump of the tropics” – lost the 2022 election, but his party remains the largest in Brazil’s parliament. And analysts believe that Trump’s rise to power in the US will also favor “mini-Trumps” in Latin American countries.

What’s true in Asia and Australia

In Asia and Australia, the Right has maintained its dominance of the political scene with 55.6% of the vote, the highest average since 2017. Jacinta Ardern, New Zealand’s left-wing prime minister, resigned in 2023 and was replaced by Christopher Luxon, leader of the centre-right National Party. In Australia, the right-wing Liberal-National Party coalition has taken a lead in the polls ahead of the election, which will be held later this year.

Last year, Japan’s right-wing Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority, but the rise of younger, smaller far-right parties helped boost the country’s right-wing vote to 63.87 percent. In India, the world’s largest democracy, Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were elected for a third term in June 2024. However, the opposition centrist and centre-left coalition of the Indian National Congress recorded an increase in its vote share.

Historically…Left low in Africa and the Middle East

In the eight African and Middle Eastern democracies, the left’s vote share fell to a record low of 54.2% in 2024. For most of the last 30 years, the average percentage of left-wing parties has always been above 60%, but this has declined after a long period of financial mismanagement scandals.

In South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, the centre-left African National Congress failed to win the parliamentary majority it has held since the first post-apartheid elections in 1994.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party has been in power in Israel since 2020. The next elections will not be held earlier than 2027, but Likud, which is in coalition with four far-right parties, is still leading in the polls despite Netanyahu’s handling of Gaza and the hostage crisis following the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023.

Britain’s exception

On the counterpoint to all this, Labour’s sweeping victory in Britain was one of the few triumphs of the left in 2024 – and this…phenomenon, however, is likely to be fleeting. The first YouGov/Times poll since the general election shows a close contest between Labour and Reform UK, with 26% to 25%. The Conservative Party is a very close third, taking 22%.

All of the above clearly shows that the Left should rethink its policies around the world and seek partnerships – in contrast, perhaps, to the divisive logics that are in its DNA. A change of faces is also seen as imperative to inspire younger voters. Otherwise, 2025 may be even worse for left-wing parties worldwide and may even “pale” in comparison to the bleak, for them, 2024…