What the one-in-three populism figure measures

The number is 32.6 percent. It is the combined support for populist, authoritarian and extremist parties on the left and the right, measured in the latest national elections of 31 European countries, says the Authoritarian Populism Index 2026, published on 22 October. EUobserver turned it into one in three European voters, and an opinion piece the next day used it to argue that the centre is collapsing while the far right learns to cooperate.

The definition behind the number is broad, and that decides what it can carry.

Who produced the number

The index comes from the Swedish think tank Timbro and EPICENTER, a Brussels-based network of thirteen European think tanks. The author is Andreas Johansson Heinö. It maps more than 260 parties in 31 countries, with election data from 1945 to October 2026, and the publishers say the views are the author’s own.

Timbro was founded in 1978 and has been funded mainly by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, and it is described as a neoliberal, free market think tank. That does not make the data wrong, but readers should know who is counting.

Reinhard Heinisch, a political scientist in Salzburg, said the index “combines different hard-to-measure concepts” and should be read with caution.

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What the 32.6 percent counts

EPICENTER says combined support for populist, authoritarian and extremist parties on the left and right has reached a record 32.6 percent, roughly three times the post-war average. Challenger parties now win more than 20 percent in 26 of the 31 countries and sit in 11 of the 31 governments.

The figure does not say that a third of voters want authoritarian rule. Authoritarian is a subset. Of 76 parties analysed in depth, 18 are classed as highly authoritarian, among them Fidesz in Hungary, PiS in Poland and Smer in Slovakia, and 20 are hard eurosceptic. The criteria for those labels are not described on the publisher’s page. Timbro’s release does not say whether larger countries weigh more in the average.

The trend is clearer than the level. About 10 percent voted for such parties in the 1950s and 1960s and that the share was just under 30 percent in 2019. The index has since widened its sample, so the step from 2019 to 2026 may not compare like for like.

Where the centre actually lost

The same index undercuts the idea of a collapsing centre as one block. Social democrats have lost more than four in ten voters since 2000, and Christian democrats have declined steadily since the 1970s. Liberal parties, meanwhile, are holding close to their best-ever results.

The radical right drives the rise and has kept its voters after the refugee crisis receded. The radical left has risen recently but remains well below its post-war strength. The index thus describes losses in some mainstream families and gains in others, not a single centre in decline.

The country picture moves in both directions. Germany, Bulgaria and Norway show the largest rises, with the AfD above 20 percent in the last federal vote. Hungary’s score fell sharply after the April elections ended Viktor Orbán’s rule.

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Cooperation and its limits

An opinion piece by Nikolaj Nielsen says the far right now collaborates instead of fighting. It also notes that populist alliances have a record of finding common ground and then falling apart. It cites a report from the US group Action for Democracy, which sees shaky far-right alliances in Europe “creating the scaffolding for possible future leadership under an authoritarian bent.”

The 2026 index does not test that claim directly. It does say that attitudes to Moscow, Ukraine and Trump’s MAGA movement increasingly divide the European radical right, and that American backing has not delivered the electoral boost many expected.

Office has also tamed some challengers, such as the Sweden Democrats and the Finns Party, emboldened others and collapsed coalitions in the Netherlands, according to the index.

The 2024 edition looked at how challengers reach power. It found that right-wing populists often gained office through cooperation with established conservative parties, and that a cordon sanitaire had not reduced their support over time. EPICENTER analyst Mateusz Michnik argues that populists can “infect” other parties, which he says helps explain the spread of anti-migration policies.

What the next elections test

France, Italy, Poland and Spain all face elections ahead. They will show whether 32.6 percent is a ceiling for challenger parties or a floor, and whether the alliances between them survive a coalition table.