The United States midterm elections appear stacked against the ruling Republicans, with polls suggesting the Democrats average an eight-point lead in the House of Representatives and the Senate. But if Democrats take one or both houses, could they affect upcoming elections in Europe? Not fundamentally, analysts and observers have told Al Jazeera, but besides a welcome improvement in transatlantic relations, they point to two potentially adverse effects.
First, a Democratic Congress might produce complacency among Europeans regarding their own far-right movements. Second, it might spur US President Donald Trump to raise pressure on Ukraine to make a deal it doesn’t want to make with Russia. It would introduce “the idea that these things don’t mean the advent of a fascist regime”, she said.
From her vantage point in Paris, Fieschi said she imagines a Democratic win leading to “a whole discussion about whether we should fear a Marine Le Pen election as much as some people say we should, or whether, in fact, it’s swings and roundabouts and, at some point, if people are really bad and really incompetent, then elections right the way,” she said. French right-wing politician Marine Le Pen is currently leading the field in polling for presidential elections scheduled for April 18, with surveys indicating she has about 34 percent of the popular vote. There is a precedent for the complacency Fieschi alludes to.
In June 2025, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think tank, polled Europeans following Trump’s first six months in office. Clear majorities in Western Europe said the US political system was broken. In Eastern Europe, majorities said it was working well – though they were weighted towards right-wing voters.
Greek Migration Minister Thanos Plevris warned against giving too much credit to the US for what Europeans think and do, however. He said he believes European public opinion hardened against asylum and economic migration independently, but the US marked the shift by expressing it more violently, with military deportation flights and armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents sweeping American cities. We saw this in Germany, which had a welcoming attitude [to refugees] for many years, and they went to a more controlled policy.
All northern European governments saw societies change,” he told Al Jazeera. I do think that pivot played a role in Europe,” Plevris added. Should French voters decide that the only way out is through electing Le Pen – “like some kind of strong medicine that would wake us up to what we might lose”, as Fieschi put it – they would have to contend with three controversial propositions – cutting French financial contributions to the European Union’s federal budget to pay for earlier retirement, cutting military aid to Ukraine and possibly leaving the single currency, the euro, in favour of a devalued franc.
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