Politics

Poll: The political right has staked a claim on patriotism across the West

Published

3 months ago

July 5, 2026

Patriotism has become partisan.

It doesn’t matter that people across the ideological spectrum are equally likely to say that they themselves are patriotic. New international polling shows that when you ask them about expressions of patriotism, they think those displays are right-coded.

Those results from The POLITICO Poll reveal the extent of right-wing populist parties’ success after years of claiming nationalism as central to their political identities — and growing in power and popularity.

The political parties furthest to the right across several major Western democracies were consistently more associated with national pride than other parties, the poll found. A 29-percent plurality of U.K. adults, for example, said they would expect someone who said they were “proud to be British” to support Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform U.K., 16 points greater than the 13 percent who would expect them to be from the center-right Conservative Party. Similar pluralities said the same in France about Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, or National Rally (30); in Germany about Alternative for Germany, or AfD (35); and in Spain about Vox (29).

In the United States’ two-party system, respondents were 15 points more likely to expect someone who said they were proud to be American to be Republican (38) than Democratic (23).

The findings are the latest sign that these parties — from Donald Trump’s “America First” movement in the United States to the rise of the far right across Europe — are owning the language and symbols of patriotism, including a country’s flag.

Right-wing parties have rapidly gained ground by tapping into voters’ growing concerns over border security and cost of living, and have flexed their power over the last decade, reshaping existing debates over conservatism, sovereignty and national identity. In some cases, they have pushed major political parties, like America’s GOP, further to the right.

But even as the politics of patriotism have shifted toward the right, the poll found that pride in one’s country is essentially nonpartisan.

Majorities of adults across the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain all say they are proud of their country. In the U.S., 68 percent of adults — including most Trump 2024 voters and former Vice President Kamala Harris voters — say they are proud to be American.

The June survey, conducted by London-based Public First, shows the challenge for centrist and left-leaning parties that are weighing how to reclaim overt symbols of patriotism — or redefine what patriotism means for them.

Kevin Madden, a longtime GOP communications strategist in Washington, said the findings reflect the rising tide of hyper-partisanship.

“Political polarization is coloring views through a left-right, us-versus-them political lens,” he said. “That lens changes based on whether [people’s] preferred party is in charge or not.”

Far-right parties embrace politics of national pride

Debates over immigration, sovereignty and cultural flashpoints across the West have increasingly turned into fights over what a nation stands for — and who that includes, and who gets to define it.

In the United States, Trump’s “America First” agenda and “Make America Great Again” movement have explicitly made national identity central to Republican messaging. The president has vowed to secure the southern border, conduct widespread deportations and prioritize aggressive trade politics aimed at boosting the U.S. economy.

The Blue Light News Poll found that Trump’s rhetoric is very popular among the right in Europe. When asked how they would feel about a candidate who promised to “Make [their country] Great Again,” far-right respondents across the countries — including 70 percent in Reform U.K., 68 percent in France’s National Rally, 66 percent in Germany’s AfD and 77 percent in Spain’s Vox party — said it would make them feel more positive about that candidate.

That comes as those parties have similarly centered campaigns on immigration, borders and cultural identity, presenting themselves as defenders of their nations.

In Germany, expressions of national pride are often viewed through the lens of the country’s Nazi past. For decades after World War II, overt displays of patriotism — including flying the German flag from homes, porches and balconies — were widely regarded as distasteful. This was particularly true on the political left, where patriotism was often considered legitimate only insofar as it was grounded in Germany’s rejection of nationalism and its country’s reckoning with the Holocaust.

But a political movement based on restoring national pride and a sense of past glory has taken root in the far-right AfD party, which actively campaigns to instill patriotism in German youth. In the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD is far ahead in the polls ahead of a regional election set for September, the party’s platform calls for an end to “the perpetuation of a guilt complex” among Germany’s youth and advocates a renewed “call for patriotism.”

That comes through in The Blue Light News Poll, which found that a 44 percent plurality of AfD supporters say that people in Germany aren’t proud enough of the country’s history, significantly greater shares than in other parties. AfD voters were also much more likely than others to say they would think positively of someone who said they were “proud to be German.”

France, too, has been a battleground in the war over patriotism, as Le Pen and her party have centered anti-immigration and French national identity. The Euroskeptic National Rally has become so associated with the French tricolor flag that as the campaign for next year’s presidential election gets underway, leftist candidates are saying they must claw back national symbols from populists who have co-opted them.

President of France's far-right National Rally, Marine Le Pen, attends a ceremony marking the 81st anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, on May 8, 2026.

In the U.K., Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s centrist left Labour Party won a landslide election victory in 2024, partly through a very deliberate strategy of rebranding itself as a patriotic movement. The Union Jack flag was added to every party communication, and members were required to sing the national anthem at Labour’s annual conference. Party bosses focused on 40 percent of the electorate whom they termed “hero voters” — these were usually middle-aged, working-class people who supported Brexit. They were patriotic and proud of Britain, and tended to feel neglected by mainstream politicians.

But after less than a year in power, Starmer’s Labour had lost support among many in this group and fallen below Nigel Farage’s populist nationalist Reform U.K. in the polls. Another year later, his continuing nosedive in popularity — and a Labour wipeout in local elections in May — forced him to resign.

Meanwhile, the far right is gaining more traction. British nationalist activist Tommy Robinson, who has draped his “Unite the Kingdom” marches in flags and pushes anti-Islam views, is widely seen in a negative light by British voters but enjoys notable support among Reform U.K. supporters, Public First polling found earlier this year.

Can the left reclaim patriotism?

For parties on the political left, the problem is not that their voters reject patriotism.

Majorities of adults across the countries surveyed say they are proud of their country, and they are far more likely to respond positively than negatively toward a political candidate who said they loved their country and were proud to live there.

In the United States, for example, a 45 percent plurality of Harris voters said they would feel more positively toward such a candidate. In the U.K., 47 percent of Liberal Democrats and a 53 percent plurality of Labour supporters say they would feel more positively.

The challenge for these parties is that some of the overt symbols of patriotism — such as displaying a national flag, or even owning one — have become more closely associated with conservative parties.

“As much as these results show the political right having success in claiming patriotic language, they also show left parties abandoning a political message that has potential,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First. “This is easier terrain for the left than party leaders think, given the pride we see across the spectrum.”

Across several of the world’s major democracies, there’s a brewing movement underway to try to reclaim patriotism from the far-right parties.

England’s St. George’s flag — a red cross on a white background — has long been used to show support for the national soccer team. It has also been associated with nationalism and racist political movements in the U.K.

But recently, some football fans have taken to displaying the flag with the viral phrase “Football not Farage” — an effort to show their frustration with right-wing politicians co-opting the symbol for their political cause at a time when it is being used to celebrate the nation’s participation in the World Cup.

The flag of the United Kingdom and the flag of St George hang from lamposts in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

In the U.S., Democratic lawmakers and candidates are leaning more deliberately into patriotic themes, even if they emphasize them differently than Republicans do. Rather than focusing on flags and traditional patriotic imagery, many have highlighted their military service and sense of civic duty. A number of Democratic House candidates who are also veterans, for instance, are touting their service and commitment to the country in ads and on campaign websites.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading figure in the progressive movement, told TMZ that “we need to be focusing a lot more on how all of us are American,” when asked about the nation’s flag and how it is typically more associated with Republicans.

“America is not whoever is in charge right now. To me, my understanding of our country is all of the great people and movements that are a part of it,” she said, later adding: “The immigrant story is one of the most American stories that we have.”

Tim Ross, Joshua Berlinger, James Angelos and Hanne Cokelaere contributed reporting.

Politics

NRSC Chair Tim Scott leaves Georgia, North Carolina off his list of top Senate targets

Published

52 minutes ago

September 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is shifting its focus away from the North Carolina and Georgia Senate races as it works to shore up red states like Texas and flip other Democratic-held seats.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, Sen. Tim Scott, the chair of the NRSC, told Senate Republicans that the campaign arm will focus its spending going forward on defending GOP seats in Maine, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa and Texas and trying to flip the Democratic-held seats of Michigan and New Hampshire, according to four people in the room who were granted anonymity to share private details.

That list notably leaves out North Carolina GOP nominee Michael Whatley’s battle against Democrat Roy Cooper and Georgia GOP nominee Mike Collins’ effort to unseat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.

Scott’s briefing is the clearest sign yet that Republicans have deprioritized the two states, as POLITICO has reported, while senior Republicans grow increasingly resigned to the possibility of losing those races. It’s a remarkable shift: President Donald Trump carried Georgia twice in 2016 and 2024 and North Carolina over the last three presidential elections.

In deprioritizing North Carolina, the NRSC is effectively ceding a state that Democrats haven’t won in the Senate since 2008.

Still, other GOP groups with massive war chests, including Trump’s MAGA Inc., could pick up the slack.

Scott also shared with the senators polling showing Republicans are locked in tight battles in several other key races, which tracks with much of the public polling, according to the four people.

For example, one poll found that GOP Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio is still trailing former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Scott also showed polling indicating Republican John Sununu is essentially neck-and-neck with Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, a seat Republicans are laser-focused on trying to flip.

NRSC did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Collins’ campaign.

“As Roy Cooper said earlier this year about U.S. Senate races in North Carolina, ‘Democrats are often ahead until they are not.’ And then just last week Cooper, correctly, observed, ‘We know a lot of undecided voters lean Republican.’ We’re confident we will have the resources to get our message out to North Carolina voters and win,” said Whatley Spokesman DJ Griffin in a statement.

Georgia GOP party chair Josh McKoon dismissed the notion that his state was being deprioritized by Republicans in Washington, even as he acknowledged beating Ossoff will be a challenge.

“Every cycle, someone in Washington leaks that they’re thinking about moving money,” he said in a text message. “What matters is who shows up — and what the actual numbers say.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is set to headline a fundraiser for Collins in Atlanta on Thursday, alongside the state’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp. The Collins campaign is also making the case that one in 10 Georgia voters — who backed Trump in 2024 and plan to vote for Jackson — are still “up for grabs,” according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.

“The goal in Georgia is to strike a balance where you are spending as little for Senate as possible while not derailing Rick Jackson’s, so far, very strong bid for Governor in a difficult environment,” said a GOP pollster granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape. Public polling shows the governor’s race has much tighter margins, with Jackson leading Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms in some recent surveys.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who lost his Senate primary to Trump-backed Ken Paxton, was also in the room. He later told Blue Light News that the party has to make tough decisions.

“At some point I think the people spending that money are going to have to make hard choices and figure out where the money can have the biggest impact, and certainly Texas is the most expensive,” Cornyn said.

Politics

The NY governor race pollster scrum

Published

1 hour ago

September 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A new Quinnipiac University poll has Gov. Kathy Hochul leading her Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman by a sizable margin.

Q THE LANDSLIDE: Quinnipiac University released a poll today that found Gov. Kathy Hochul leading Republican Bruce Blakeman 58-39 — putting her on track for the fourth-largest landslide by a New York gubernatorial candidate in the past 200 years.

It’s by far the best poll for Hochul this year and certainly better than a Siena University survey out this morning that found her with a modest 9 point lead over the Nassau County executive.

So which one’s closer to reality?

The last time both pollsters released New York numbers on the same day was a few weeks before Hochul’s last election in 2022. Siena found at the time that her lead over then-Rep. Lee Zeldin was quickly shrinking, having dropped from 17 to 11 points.

The Q Poll painted a more dire picture for the governor.

“We released a poll in mid-October showing that Hochul had a 4 point lead over Lee Zeldin,” Quinnipiac spokesperson Mary Snow said. “And it went against the grain of other polls out there at the time.”

Hochul wound up winning that race by about 6 points.

Pollster vs. pollster results in prior elections have been mixed. Both Q and Siena nailed Andrew Cuomo’s eventual 23 point margin of victory in October 2018 polls, though Siena’s early November numbers that year found Cuomo’s lead had shrunk to 13. An infamous Q Poll from September 2010 found Cuomo with a stunningly small 6 point lead over Buffalo firebrand Carl Paladino, while a Siena poll the next day found a much more predictive 57-24 Cuomo advantage.

The biggest difference this time around is that Quinnipiac assumed a higher share of November’s turnout will be in deep blue New York City.

The five boroughs accounted for 31 percent of the statewide turnout in 2022 and 34 percent in 2018. Siena’s sample assumed 30 percent of this year’s voters will come from there, while 38 percent of Quinnipiac’s sample was from the city.

Quinnipiac also does more to avoid undecided voters. “One tweak that we made after 2020 was an adjustment to the questions that we ask, so that we try to cut down on the number of people who say they don’t know,” Snow said.

Only 3 percent of the Q Poll’s sample declined to weigh in on the Hochul-Blakeman race, while the comparable number was 9 percent in Siena’s poll. And it appears as if a lot of the Quinnipiac respondents who might not have answered Siena’s questions broke toward the incumbent: Siena has Hochul winning New York City 61-27 while Quinnipiac has her up 70-27; Siena had her up 57-34 among women while Quinnipiac found her lead at 63-34.

Another notable difference between the methodologies that may account for the divergent results is that Quinnipiac’s sample was based on asking respondents what party they affiliate with. Siena uses voter registration files.

“For a couple of years running, the New York Times/Siena Poll was ranked as the most accurate poll in America,” Siena spokesperson Steve Greenberg said. “Siena has been polling New York state for nearly a quarter of a century, and we have shown that we get it right almost all of the time.”

Republicans, for their part, believe both sets of numbers are far overstating Hochul’s advantage.

“Blakeman is closer in the polls I’ve seen than Lee Zeldin was at this moment in time four years ago,” state Senate Republican Campaign Committee Chair George Borrello said. “As I travel around New York state, I have seen literally thousands of Bruce Blakeman signs. Yet I can count on one hand the number of Kathy Hochul signs I’ve seen, unless you count the ones that say ‘Fire Hochul.’” — Bill Mahoney

From the Capitol

A new program has made progress in awarding large-scale batteries and contracting new renewables.

MEGAWATT DEAL: New York has made its first awards for large-scale batteries under a new program and secured contracts for new renewables that are close to getting built.

The state’s energy authority contracted for 719 megawatts from 13 solar, wind and hydroelectric projects and 950 megawatts of battery storage from eight projects.

NYSERDA President and CEO Doreen Harris announced the awards Wednesday during a Climate Week event hosted by the state’s renewable developers association.

“Everything that we do with respect to our energy system costs money,” Harris said. “When we invest in clean energy, not only are we talking about low single-digit percentage increases in cost, we are talking about benefits that far exceed those costs.”

Hochul warned that federal headwinds and rising expenses made a more ambitious pace of transitioning to clean energy too costly as she successfully fought to weaken New York’s ambitious climate law earlier this year. But she has highlighted her continued support for progress on offshore wind, renewables, storage and nuclear this week.

New York and developers are racing the expiration of federal tax credits. Renewables that didn’t start construction by July 4 — or don’t finish work by the end of the year if they start after that deadline — won’t be eligible for those key incentives that lower the cost of contracts for the state.

FROM CITY HALL

Bellevue Hospital CEO Eric Wei speaks during a press conference announcing $26.5 million in funding from the City Council.

MAKING ROOM: Bellevue Hospital announced a major renovation and expansion of its inpatient psychiatric wing, fueled by an infusion of $26.5 million from the City Council.

Bellevue, which is part of the NYC Health + Hospitals system, will use the new capital funding to add 40 beds for adult psychiatric patients over the next few years — bringing the division’s total capacity to 204 beds.

Hospital officials said the expansion will ease the bottleneck of patients with severe mental illnesses who need to be admitted for continued observation and treatment; those inpatient psychiatric units have been operating consistently at 98% capacity.

“The need here demanded an investment of this scale,” Council member Virginia Maloney, who spearheaded the funding, said during a news conference in the hospital’s atrium.

Bellevue Hospital CEO Eric Wei said the facility has seen a bump in psychiatric patients since the April 2025 closure of Mount Sinai Beth Israel several blocks away. Bellevue’s dedicated ER for psychiatric patients, which Wei said sees about 30 patients daily, is undergoing its own $40 million expansion.

“We are unfortunately needing to transfer out about 90 patients a month to other inpatient units because there’s no room in our inpatient psychiatric units,” Wei said in an interview. “We’re always feeling like I’m toeing the line. We’re very busy.”

Bellevue was so overwhelmed as of late that hospital officials asked FDNY to stop bringing them patients with psychiatric emergencies, according to EMS union Local 2507. Those diversion requests continued for at least a couple weeks in late August and early September, a union spokesperson said. — Maya Kaufman

IN OTHER NEWS

— INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE: A NYC high school which once enrolled 3,000 students now has only 90. (The City Reporter)

— FIRST IN THE NATION: In a new TV ad, Hochul is touting her first-in-the-nation data center moratorium. (City & State)

— HITTING THE BRAKES: The rollout of electric school buses in New York state has been rocky. (The New York Times)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.

Politics

Trump officials weigh rolling back beef import plan as GOP midterm panic spreads

Published

3 hours ago

September 23, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A small group of White House officials are exploring whether to cut back President Donald Trump’s decision to increase foreign beef imports, as GOP panic rises ahead of the midterms.

The proposal to reduce the amount of imports is being discussed within the Domestic Policy Council headed by Vince Haley, a longtime Trump speechwriter and former campaign official, and a few other officials at the White House, according to two people with direct knowledge of the conversations, who were granted anonymity to share private details.

Trump officials are unsure if anything will come of the talks. The two people said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative disagrees with cutting back the imports, since it aims to lower high consumer beef prices in the short term and since USTR helped implement the move.

But their conversations about partly rolling back the beef policy — which Trump instituted in August — is a clear sign the White House is trying to stem the alarm from battleground and farm-state Republicans as high prices and Trump’s tariffs roil their election campaigns. The White House is also preparing a plan on diesel exports, likely with exemptions, amid sky-high prices from the Iran war.

The White House, USTR and Department of Agriculture did not respond to requests for comment.

Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate nominee, took the extraordinary step this week of publicly breaking with Trump, saying gas prices were too high because of the Iran war and that farmers in her state are suffering. Michigan Senate GOP nominee Mike Rogers and other vulnerable House and Senate Republicans have made similar breaks.

Farm-state lawmakers in Iowa and beyond have publicly called for the White House to provide some relief from the beef import executive action in particular, because of its impact on farmers and ranchers.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the rest of the Iowa delegation and other senior farm-state lawmakers have all pressed the administration to change course — to no avail.

Trump did sign an executive order of rancher-friendly policies as a way to address the initial backlash. But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer made clear to a group of House Republicans in a closed-door briefing earlier this month that Trump’s executive action to import 300,000 metric tons of beef without certain tariffs and at discounted prices would go forward as planned, as Blue Light News first reported.