This study
that looked at Trump supporters has got quite a bit of publicity.
Some have been surprised that “his supporters are less educated and
more likely to work in blue collar occupations, but they earn
relative high household incomes, and living in areas more exposed
to trade or immigration does not increase Trump support.” They also
tend to be a little older. Having looked
at who voted for Brexit, I was not surprised.
The two clear explanatory variables for those who voted that the UK
should leave the EU were education and age. Much has also been made
of the fact that, other things equal, those from areas of the country
that suffered from deindustrialisation over the last 30 years tended
to vote Leave, but there was no correlation with levels or rates of
change of income. Nor is there any clear correlation between Brexit
support and levels of immigration, again matching this study’s
findings for Trump support.
One of the most striking findings from the post-Brexit Ashcroft poll
was the answer to the following question: “Overall, life in Britain
today is better/worse than it was 30 years ago’. While Remain
voters overwhelming chose better, a clear majority of Leave voters
chose worse. If you take that question to be only about individual
living standards, then there is no way half the population have had
declining living standards over the last 30 years. But why should a
question about ‘life in Britain today’ be interpreted in narrow
economic terms?
In the case of Brexit we had a coalition between two groups who had
reason to feel aggrieved at trends over the last 30 years: social
conservatives within an increasingly liberal society and those living
in areas that had not shared in metropolitan economic success. You
could say that both groups, in different ways, had been left behind
and therefore become alienated by the dominant sectors of society.
(See this study
by Jennings and Stoker, for example.)
The Trump study finds “more subtle measures at the commuting zone
level provide evidence that social well-being, measured by longevity
and intergenerational mobility, is significantly lower among in the
communities of Trump supporters. The causal mechanisms linking health
and intergenerational well-being to political views are not
well-understood in the social science literature. It may be the case
that material circumstances caused by economic shocks manifest
themselves in depression, disappointment, and ill-health, and those
are the true underlying causes. Or, it may be that material
well-being and health are undermined by a cultural or psychological
failure to adjust and adapt to a changing world.” [typos corrected]
Times of rapid economic and social change can leave large parts of
society left behind, particularly if they are not equipped with the
skills required to adapt. When incomes then stop growing,
these groups long for things to be how they used to be (to 'make
America great again'). The most obvious manifestation of change is
the prospect (not actuality) of living with different people and
cultures: hence 'taking back control' over immigration in the UK and
building a wall in the US. What the Brexit vote showed is that when
this fear of the new is combined with a protest over relative
economic deprivation it can become a dangerous political force. For
the US we can just hope that to be forewarned is to be forearmed.
