Far-right parties are pulling roughly 23% of the vote across Europe in 2025 and 2026, but five countries have kept them ...

Far-right parties are pulling roughly 23% of the vote across Europe in 2025 and 2026, but five countries have kept them almost entirely out of parliament, according to a new analysis by journalist Laura Beider Jensen for European Correspondent, drawing on data from ParlGov, The PopuList, and national statistics agencies. Ireland, Malta, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and Greece are the five outliers. The first four emerged from their most recent election cycles with far-right parties holding either zero seats or a purely marginal role. Greece is in a prolonged pre-election period with polls expected in the spring of 2027. In Ireland, the top three parties after the November 2024 elections span the liberal center, the left, and the center-right. Political scientist Paul Gillespie, writing in the Irish Times, argues that the country's national identity was shaped by the experience of mass emigration and anti-colonial struggle against Britain, not by nativist tradition or racial supremacy. He adds that the two dominant centrist parties absorb enough populist and conservative voters to leave no viable space for nationalist outfits. Ireland's ranked-choice voting system also favors compromise over sharp political conflict. Malta is even more firmly locked into a two-party system. The center-left Labour Party and center-right Nationalist Party together took 95% of the vote in the last election. Economist and columnist Frans Camilleri of Malta Independent notes that while many Maltese worry about immigration, those concerns have not yet reached the level needed to push voters toward small parties that have little to say about bigger issues like the cost of living or the environment. Luxembourg's far-right ADR party took 9.5% in the 2023 elections, making it the strongest of the five cases but still far from mainstream influence. The duchy has the highest per-capita income in the world at $147,000 according to the World Bank, hosts 120 international banks, and is home to major EU institutions including the Court of Justice and the European Investment Bank. That deeply internationalized economic identity leaves little room for Eurosceptic narratives. Lithuania rounds out...