But if a European-style welfare state is the preferred destination of young Americans, where are young Europeans heading? After all, they already have most of the things their transatlantic counterparts say they want.

According to the standard account, the 2008–09 economic crisis and the migration crisis of 2015–16 were bound to drive voters into the arms of the far right. Young Europeans were seen by some as easy prey for populists, as they had no memories of the bad old days of nationalism and war in the mid-20th century.

Indeed, in the European elections in 2015, the far-right National Front and its leader, Marine Le Pen, came in first among French voters under 35, winning 30 percent of their votes. However, more recent election results suggest that Millennials and Gen Zers, like their American counterparts, are pulling the center of gravity of national politics to the left rather than the right.

In the European elections held earlier this year, Le Pen’s score among the young nearly halved, and the Greens triumphed, despite the efforts of the renamed National Rally to attract the youth vote by installing the charismatic 23-year-old Jordan Bardella as the lead candidate.

Across the Rhine, Germans ages 30 and under gave the Greens their best-ever result in a national election. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in a distant sixth among the young.

Overall, the 2019 European elections were a disappointment for the leaders of the populist right, some of whom had boasted about taking over Brussels. Unable to win the youth vote in any major EU country except Italy, Poland, and Hungary—more about those countries below—the far right collectively recorded a net gain of only 13 members in the 751-seat European Parliament.

Recent national elections point to the same leftward trend among younger voters. And data from Eurobarometer, which has regularly surveyed the population in all EU member countries since 1973, show that a rising proportion of Millennials and Gen Zers identify themselves as left-leaning or centrist.

It is no surprise, then, that polls show growing support among younger European voters for policies advanced by left-wing parties. Millennials and Gen Zers value public services; they worry about racial and other forms of discrimination, as well as about climate change. They are more pro-European than previous generations and more willing to hand over new governing powers to Brussels.

Yet on closer inspection, Europe’s young are less progressive—or “woke”—than their American contemporaries. A third of Millennial and Gen Z voters in Europe consider themselves centrists, compared with about a fifth who are on the center left and fewer than a 10th who are far left. Young Europeans may worry about the environment, but for four out of five under-25s, it is not their No. 1 or even their No. 2 priority. And they are emphatically not socialists. Like their parents, most of them believe that the private sector is better at creating jobs than the state is, that work contracts should become more flexible, and that competition is good. Indeed, under-25s have a more positive view of globalization than do older cohorts.

In the U.S., Millennials and Gen Zers are losing their belief in the American dream, with its individualistic promise that your destiny is in your own hands. Some surveys even put socialism ahead of capitalism with very young voters. In Europe, by contrast, the under-30s are more disposed than their parents to view poverty as a result of an individual’s choice. Even as they still support the social contract typical for Europe, whereby the welfare state limits inequality and provides generous public services, they are also less in favor than older generations of fiscal redistribution to reduce inequality.

Research from the International Monetary Fund shows that the young bore the brunt of Europe’s post-2008 economic downturn. Because pensions and salaries—especially in the public sector—were relatively well protected, older voters were much less exposed to the consequences of the financial crisis. It was younger Europeans who were hit by very high unemployment rates, precarious or part-time employment, and the low wages that go with such jobs. Moreover, fiscal-consolidation efforts generally hit younger age groups harder than older ones, especially pensioners.