What is the perception of European parties in the US?

Question

I wonder whether the average American has an idea of how the Republican and Democratic party are ordered on the political spectrum in comparison to other major parties in the West.

Take e.g. Germany. The three biggest German parties, that is in descending order, the conservative party (CDU), the green party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and the social democrats (SPD) are all far left of the American political two party spectrum.

Many policies, which are regarded as left-radicalism or socialism in the US are endorsed by all of these parties for decades. Germany is only one example for a wide range of European parties.

Does the American public know, that their perception of left and right is is skewed and right-shifted in comparison to many other Western countries? Or do they assume that European conservative parties refer to policies similar to the Republican parties policies?

Answer 1

Does the American public know, that their perception of left and right is is skewed and right-shifted in comparison to many other Western countries?

The American public is mostly oblivious to the domestic politics of countries other than their own, although there is some vague familiarity with the leading political parties of Canada, Mexico and the U.K. These topics receive very little U.S. media coverage and are rarely discussed by U.S. politicians.

Politically active, college educated, progressives (perhaps 10% of voters, often via support for Bernie Sanders rather than knowledge of European politics directly) tend to be aware of the array of political parties on the left in Europe and to have a favorable opinion of Democratic Socialism and the Green Parties. A narrower swath of educated politically active people on the far right and for whatever reason, quite a few libertarians (perhaps 5% of voters in all), have some meaningful awareness of the parties of the far right in Europe, but less awareness of European Center-Right parties.

Or do they assume that European conservative parties refer to policies similar to the Republican parties policies?

I doubt that 5% of Americans have ever had any thoughts on this subject, and would have a hard time even associating famous European national leaders with particular political parties. The very internationally aware without first hand experience mostly might have some dim sense that there might be differences.

Maybe 1-3% of Americans might have some generally familiarity with European political parties and what they stand for. Those who do would mostly have either studied it academically in college, or served in the military in Europe, or otherwise lived in Europe (e.g. as an exchange student or expatriate employee).

Methods

I'm starting with a rough sense from surveys (also here and here) and exit polls of the breakdown of Americans by politics and education, I'm cross referencing that (intuitively) with categories of people I've experienced knowing about or discussing these things and prevalence of knowledge within categories, after lots of experience in politics at the grass roots level and in media quotations of people and politicians, I'm factoring in (intuitively) data on levels of depth of knowledge to similar degrees, about Europe or foreign affairs generally, It's an informed guesstimate, but order of magnitude close.

Answer 2

ohwilleke's answer is correct that most people in the U.S. aren't familiar with many of the particular political parties in Europe, aside from maybe those in the UK. Aside from the UK Labour and Conservative parties (and, during the campaigning for the Brexit vote, UKIP,) particular European political parties rarely make the news in the U.S., aside from maybe a passing mention of which party won an election or the party affiliation of a politician being mentioned.

That being said, most Americans are nevertheless aware that European politics are generally farther left than those in the U.S., especially with regards to economic policy. The more economically left-leaning elements of the U.S. Democratic Party (and the portion of the media that supports them) bring this up incessantly, with the economic policies of the Nordic countries being especially frequently cited.

Americans also tend to be aware that average European views on many other issues tend to be farther left than American ones (private ownership of firearms being an extreme example.) Americans are generally aware of different attitudes in Europe towards foreign relations, especially with regards to issues regarding such places as Israel, Palestine, Iran, China, etc.

I don't think many Americans would equate an average European conservative party with the U.S. Republican Party. Most are generally aware that they would be farther left. However, most Americans wouldn't be very familiar with the particular views or platforms of any given European political party. This shouldn't be particularly surprising given the number and size of countries in Europe. The average European would be similarly unaware of the minutiae of the political environments of any given U.S. state, which are similar in scale to European countries. Similarly, both Americans and Europeans are unlikely to be familiar with the parties and their positions in countries in South or Central America, Africa, or most of Asia or of the political environments of various regions of larger countries like China, India, or Brazil.

Answer 3

The relative position of the European parties relative to the US can't really be classified as simply left or right. Here is a helpful image/diagram on the issue. This diagram was produced by the New York Times, but the data was gathered by the Manifesto Project.