The rise in in authoritarianism in the west is very real and concerning and we should strive to counter it. But I think you overstate some of your points.
In the US, the most recent midterm served as a rebuke to trumpism and election denial. Despite having the highest inflation in recent memory and low favorability scores for biden, democrats actually won a senate seat, barely lost any seats in the house and defeated all AG and governors in swing states that run on election denial. This is not what a normal mid term looks like, and it is certainly not what a midterm in which authoritarians are gaining broader mainstream support would look like. In every special election, democrats overperform too, sometimes to very large extents.
Polls are important to gauge the current public opinion, but especially this far out to an election, they need to be interpreted cautiously. The general election polls are predominantly from low quality and/or republican pollsters. Higher quality pollsters do show Biden leading Trump, but even they don’t tell you very much because their numbers of undecided people is so high. This are predominantly people who disapprove of both Biden and Trump, but who have in recent election broken more favourably towards dems. Negative polarisation means that almost any politician will have a negative favorability rating, and does not tell you very much how an election will go.
In europe, authoritarians do seem to have more electoral success in some nations, sometimes forming the current governments or gaining large swells of grassroot support. But their success is fickle, with large swings both towards, but at other times away from them. Just before covid, it seemed that the far right had been beaten back after their original post-2015 surge. These swing are in itself dangerous, but they also mean you can’t just extrapolate their current success forward, they are just as likely to falter than the are to continue to be successfull.
Another thing is that most of these movements had to deradicalise to a certain extend to get to their current position. This is most visable in their stance on the EU: hard euroscepticism is now completely gone from the (successful) far right, and many have even adopted soft pro-EU positions. Transitioning from that into a more general anti-democratic and authoritarian direction is hard.
The rise in in authoritarianism in the west is very real and concerning and we should strive to counter it. But I think you overstate some of your points.
In the US, the most recent midterm served as a rebuke to trumpism and election denial. Despite having the highest inflation in recent memory and low favorability scores for biden, democrats actually won a senate seat, barely lost any seats in the house and defeated all AG and governors in swing states that run on election denial. This is not what a normal mid term looks like, and it is certainly not what a midterm in which authoritarians are gaining broader mainstream support would look like. In every special election, democrats overperform too, sometimes to very large extents.
Polls are important to gauge the current public opinion, but especially this far out to an election, they need to be interpreted cautiously. The general election polls are predominantly from low quality and/or republican pollsters. Higher quality pollsters do show Biden leading Trump, but even they don’t tell you very much because their numbers of undecided people is so high. This are predominantly people who disapprove of both Biden and Trump, but who have in recent election broken more favourably towards dems. Negative polarisation means that almost any politician will have a negative favorability rating, and does not tell you very much how an election will go.
In europe, authoritarians do seem to have more electoral success in some nations, sometimes forming the current governments or gaining large swells of grassroot support. But their success is fickle, with large swings both towards, but at other times away from them. Just before covid, it seemed that the far right had been beaten back after their original post-2015 surge. These swing are in itself dangerous, but they also mean you can’t just extrapolate their current success forward, they are just as likely to falter than the are to continue to be successfull.
Another thing is that most of these movements had to deradicalise to a certain extend to get to their current position. This is most visable in their stance on the EU: hard euroscepticism is now completely gone from the (successful) far right, and many have even adopted soft pro-EU positions. Transitioning from that into a more general anti-democratic and authoritarian direction is hard.