If elections for the Flemish Parliament were held today, far-right nationalists Vlaams Belang would secure 24.9% of the votes among 18 to 22-year-olds, according to a new poll by Hogeschool PXL and TV Limburg on Friday.
Young men in Europe are more right-wing than previous generations, the Financial Times reported this week, and Flanders has been in line with this trend for a while – a previous poll in 2019 found similar results.
Yet, according to the latest polls, no other party is still seemingly able to capture the imagination of young people in Flanders as much as Vlaams Belang, the anti-immigration Flemish nationalists who often promote false far-right conspiracies such as the Great Replacement theory.
A strategy which, thanks to social media, continues to work. In the latest poll on Flemish voting intentions, Vlaams Belang was revealed as the party that would gain the largest share of the vote (25%) in the Flemish Parliament among 18 to 22-year-olds.
Credit: Belga
After Vlaams Belang, the second-largest party among these is the Flemish Green Party (Groen), with 17.7%, followed by Flemish nationalists N-VA (15.8%) and the Belgian Workers' Party (PTB-PVDA) with 13.2%.
Other main Flemish parties are polling much lower among young adults: the Christian democrats, CD&V, received 10%, while socialists Vooruit got 9.8%, and liberals Open VLD scored only 7.6%.
Is social media to blame?
Vlaams Belang is the biggest spender on social media advertising in Belgium (and has been among the biggest in Europe). In 2023, it spent €1,688,244, an increase of 44% on the previous year.
Like many far-right parties in Europe, Vlaams Belang has a habit of resorting to inflammatory and racist content – usually videos – to stigmatise and incite hatred against immigrant communities.
One advert which circulated a video of a street fight, posted between 6 January and 11 January 2024, reads: "Revealing images from Friday night of a fight and shooting in front of a night shop in Sint-Truiden. The 'multicultural enrichment' in action... Only Vlaams Belang can and will restore law and order in our country!"
After spending up to €4,000 on this single advert, it gained around 400,000 impressions on Facebook. Importantly, the highest age group it reached was between 18-24, amounting to 36% of total impressions among men in this age group, and 19% of young women.
Party spending on Facebook in 2023 (excluding VAT). Source: Adlens / Ad Library - Facebook.
The same trend is observed in another advert with a video showing episodes of violence on New Year's Eve where immigrants are branded as "scum" which "need to be removed from society."
N-VA are also huge social media advertising spenders, having forked out only €8,000 less than Vlaams Belang in 2023. However, their social media strategy does not include posting inflammatory videos to gain impressions among younger voters.
Other findings
Bart de Wever (N-VA) and Jos D'Haese (PVDA) were the most popular among young Flemish people with 14% regarding them as the best politicians. Alexander De Croo (Open VLD) and Tom Van Grieken (Vlaams Belang) follow closely with 13%.
Conversely, the Vlaams Belang leader Van Grieken also won the accolade of the least favourable politician in Flanders (25%) among this demographic even though his personal Facebook page is also among the biggest social media advertising spenders.
There is also considerable opposition towards former Vooruit leader Conner Rousseau (16%).
Finally, it appears that a majority of young people are interested in politics (16% find politics very interesting, and 41% find it relatively interesting) even if the majority of respondents expressed little confidence (62%) or no confidence (9%) in it – another factor which may be driving first-time voters to the far-right.
The poll surveyed 1,085 young people from across Flanders who are eligible to vote for the first time in the Flemish Parliament elections on 9 June.
