"My guess is that he almost certainly did. "
Could very well be. Darwin said he was influence by Malthus. It's a short read which I recommend it.

"Yeah, but unfortunately politics is different. "
I'm not sure that politics is different. Evolution is an exemplar, an archetype really, of complex adaptive systems - nonlinear systems where there are every component of every system has some effect on the other systems and on itself. There is not universal positive. Everything is an interplay between positives and negatives.

Which is better adapted - a lion or a penguin? It depends.