Category Archives: democratic reform overseas

Where have lower-educated voters moved right? (a look at 102 countries over 35 years)

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I believe that left parties should draw their votes from lower on the socio-economic hierarchy, so that they can compete by offering more governmental support. Right parties should draw their votes from the upper end, so that they can compete by promising economic growth. This debate and competition is healthy.

In contrast, when left parties draw from the top of the social order, they tend to offer performative or symbolic policies, while the right promises low-SES voters some version of ethnonationalism. This debate is unhealthy because it blocks more effective and fair social policies, and it sets the right on a path whose terminus can be fascism.

Education is a marker of social class. We saw a social class inversion in the US 2024 election, with Harris getting 56% of college graduates and Trump getting 56% of non-college-educated adults.

Nowadays, we are used to assuming that Republicans have an advantage in the Electoral College because they are dominant in the states with the lowest percentages of college gradates, while Democrats win easily in the most educated states. But the opposite should be true.

I am fully aware that race is involved in the USA. Recently, less-educated white voters have formed the Republican base, whereas voters of color have preferred Democrats, regardless of their social class. However, in 2024, we saw a significant shift of low-education voters of color toward Trump.

Besides, race plays different roles in various countries, but many countries display a trend of lower-educated people preferring the right and moving in that direction .

The World Values Survey has periodically surveyed populations in 102 countries since 1989, for a total sample of almost half a million individuals in the dataset that I used for this post. The WVS asks most respondents to place themselves on a left-right spectrum, and the global mean is somewhat to the right of the middle. It also asks people their education level. For the entire sample, the correlation between these two variables is slightly negative and statistically significant (-.047**). In about two-thirds of sampled countries, the correlation is negative. This pattern is upside-down, suggesting the people with more education tilt mildly to the left around the world.

However, considering the heterogeneity of the countries and years in this sample (from Switzerland in 1989 to India in 2023), it is important to break things down.

The graph with this post shows the correlations for wealthy countries with democratic elections: the EU countries, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. A positive score indicates that people lower on the educational spectrum are more likely to vote left. The trend is slightly downward, meaning that the highest-educated have moved a bit left (and the lowest have moved right).

Among the countries that have recently demonstrated a class reversal (with the lower classes voting right) are Australia, Canada, Greece, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, the UK and the USA. Czechia and Slovakia are the main exceptions. In Japan and South Korea, less educated people have consistently favored the right to a small degree.

By contrast, for a sample of Latin American and Caribbean countries, the trend has generally been toward what I consider the desirable pattern, with lower-educated people increasingly voting left. The mean for all voters in this region is distinctly left of center.

In a cluster of countries that were part of the Warsaw Pact and are not now members of the EU, the trend is flat. Interestingly, in these countries, the mean voter is on the right.

Finally, the WVS surveys in some countries from the Global South–from Bangladesh to Zimbabwe-but these countries do not seem representative of the whole hemisphere. For what it’s worth, the trend for this sample is just slightly upward, and the results vary a great deal among countries.

I am still in the “deliverism” camp, believing that left parties have not delivered sufficient tangible benefits to less advantaged voters since the 1990s. (One explanation could be their dependence on affluent voters, who do not really want them to do much.) Achieving more tangible change could turn things right-side-up again.

However, it should give us pause that the Biden Administration actually spent trillions of dollars in ways that will benefit working-class Americans, yet Trump won and drew an increasing proportion of lower-educated voters of color. The “deliverist” thesis now depends on the premise that Biden-Harris had too little time and suffered from post-COVID inflation.

Meanwhile, if your premise is that US working-class voters moved right due to (increasing?) racism and sexism, you need an explanation of similar trends in many countries, including some without substantial ethnic minorities.

See also: class inversion in France; social class inversion in the 2022 US elections; class inversion as an alternative to the polarization thesis; the social class inversion as a threat to democracy; social class and the youth vote in 2024; social class and political values in the 2024 election; why “liberal” can sound like “upper-class”; UK election results by social class; social class in the French election (2022); and encouraging working class candidates

class inversion in France

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After the 2022 French election, I wrote:

The left should represent the lower-income half of the population; the right should represent the top half. When that happens, the left will generally advocate government spending and regulation. Such policies may or may not be wise, but they can be changed if they fail and prove unpopular. Meanwhile, the right will advocate less government, which (again) may or may not be desirable but will not destroy the constitutional order. After all, limited government is a self-limiting political objective.

When the class-distribution turns upside down, the left will no longer advocate impressive social reforms, because its base will be privileged. And the right will no longer favor limited government, because tax cuts don’t help the poor much. The right will instead embrace government activism in the interests of traditional national, racial or religious hierarchies. The left will frustrate change, while the right–now eager to use the government for its objectives–will become genuinely dangerous.

I wrote this as a US citizen, concerned that the Democratic Party relies on upper-income liberals while the GOP is increasingly based in the working class. But the pattern is seen internationally, which should influence how we seek to explain it.

At that time, I noted that the French electorate had turned upside-down. The right-wing far surpassed the center and the left among voters from the lowest occupational class, while the top stratum of the society favored the center or the left.

The same pattern was not clear in Britain’s recent election, where Labour performed about as well across the social spectrum (although the Tories did best among workers). However, the inversion did repeat in last week’s French election, as shown in the graphic with this post.

The data come from IPSOS. The occupational categories, in declining order of prestige, are: “cadre,” “profession intermédiaire,” “employé,” and “ouvrier.” (See more here.) The parties, in order from left to right, are the leftist New Popular Front, Macron’s “Ensemble,” the Gaullist Republicans, and the rightwing National Rally.

The inversion is most clearly illustrated by a comparison between Ensemble and the National Rally. Macron drew from the top; the right-wing party, from the bottom. But the supposedly left-wing New Popular Front performed worst among workers (ouvriers), and was the top choice of the managerial class (cadres).

IPSOS also asked about self-described class, educational attainment, and economic circumstances. The patterns are the same as shown in my graphic, but I thought that occupation would be the most reliable measure. (Reports of class identity and economic circumstances can be affected by people’s political views, rather than the reverse; but IPSOS derives its occupational categories from people’s actual jobs.)

In the USA, race is certainly relevant. The working-class Americans who have shifted right are mostly (but not exclusively) white. This may also be the case in other countries, but it is important not to assume that race and racism explain the class inversion without looking more closely at the data from the country. Unfortunately, per French law, voters cannot be asked about their race/ethnicity. However, in the IPSOS poll, just 16 percent of Catholics, versus 34 percent of members of other religions, voted for the left, and the “other” category may pick up a fair proportion of immigrants. This may suggest that some French citizens who identify as white and Catholic are voting for the right on cultural/national grounds, but that explanation is not clear from these data.

See also: UK election results by social class; social class inversion in the 2022 US elections;  class inversion as an alternative to the polarization thesis; social class in the [2022 French election; and what does the European Green surge mean?

Social class in the 2024 UK general election

UK election results by social class

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One of my obsessions is the social-class inversion that has been visible in several countries in the 21st century, in which parties of the left draw their strongest support from highly educated, “professional” voters and those on the right appeal best to the working class. Under those circumstances, left parties will block bold economic initiatives (which would cost their voters), and right parties may offer ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism, since libertarian economic policies have little relevance to workers. This is potentially a road to fascism.

The full exit polls from yesterday's UK election do not seem to be available yet (I assume they are still embargoed for the media companies that subscribe to Ipsos' service), so I have used Ipsos' final pre-election survey as a rough substitute. The interactive graphic above lets you see each party's support by social class.

The image above this post simplifies matters by grouping the Tories and Reform as "all right," and Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and the Scottish and Welsh nationalists as "all left."

You can see evidence here of a class inversion, but it is not as dramatic as in some 21st century elections. The Reform and Green parties illustrate the pattern best, drawing their support (respectively) from the bottom and the top of the social class structure. The Conservatives perform best at the bottom, but only by a bit. In all, the right does considerably better among semi-skilled and unskilled workers than among managers and professionals, but Labour holds its own across all categories, blurring the pattern.

I would argue that Labour must pursue policies that benefit the lowest social class category, not only for social justice but also to reverse the class inversion that threatens democracy itself.

See also: social class inversion in the 2022 US elections;  class inversion as an alternative to the polarization thesis; social class in the French election.

setbacks for authoritarianism?

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It’s easy to imagine authoritarianism as a ratchet: a device that can be tightened but not loosened again.

An authoritarian leader and/or party wins an election, perhaps with a substantial base of authentic supporters. Instead of blatantly overturning the constitution in a “self-coup,” the government uses a whole range of available tools to discourage opposition and secure continued power. These tools include changing the electoral system (perhaps subtly), taking over the state media, raising the cost of private media, altering curricula and removing hostile educators, selectively investigating and prosecuting opponents, heavily surveilling private communications, channeling economic benefits to supporters and potential supporters, forming close partnerships with local oligarchs, shifting power from the legislature to the executive, governing by decree and executive action, packing the civil service and judiciary with friendly appointees, encouraging opponents to emigrate while selectively refusing entry visas to journalists and activists, banning overseas NGOs and funders, encouraging the police and security forces to use visible violence, and using rhetoric that links authoritarian means to popular ends, such as prosperity or religious or ethnic domination.

Authoritarians have so many tools and opportunities that it’s easy to predict a one-way path.

Nevertheless, the following parties and/or leaders who meet at least some of the previous description have suffered setbacks or outright losses: Trump in the USA (2020), Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro (2022), the Law and Justice Party in Poland (2023), Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP (2024), and India’s Narendra Modi and the BJP (2024). I would add South Africa’s ANC (2024), although I would anticipate disagreement about that case.

It appears that “backsliding” is not a rigid and predictable process, any more than “transition to democracy” was (Cianetti & Hanley 2021). Looking at data from many countries, Brownlee & Miao find that a one-way journey toward fascism really was a pattern in the 1920s and 1930s, but at other times, there has a lot of movement in both directions, with a slight predominance of shifts away from authoritarianism (Brownlee & Miao 2022). Regimes that combine some elements of democracy, such as genuine elections, with authoritarian practices appear to be unstable, almost always teetering to one side or the other in time (Carothers 2018)

I think that civil societies are more resistant than we might fear. To put it more forcefully, it’s not so easy to boss people around.

An authoritarian party always takes over at the expense of rival political movements and would-be leaders, who have strong incentives to push back at an opportune time.

Authoritarian governments and their opponents continually innovate. Every tool of control sooner or later produces a technique for subversion. (Unfortunately, the opposite is also true: each form of resistance meets a new form of control.) One reason for waves of authoritarianism or democratization is that one side may temporarily lead in this competition, but then the other side catches up.

It is also difficult for any administration to remain popular for long. Unanticipated events–such as the current global bout of inflation–will turn people against a leader even if he doesn’t deserve the blame. Once a leader is unpopular, there are rewards to opposing him. It is risky to permit elections, even if they are subtly manipulated, but it is also hard to avoid them.

By the same token, defeating a would-be authoritarian doesn’t end the struggle, as illustrated by the USA today.

Lea Ypi, Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History

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Lea Ypi is a political theorist who has written a prize-winning memoir entitled Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History (Norton, 2021). You don’t have to be interested in political theory, philosophy–or any academic discipline–to enjoy and benefit from this book. It is an engrossing story about coming of age during an extraordinary time and in an unusual household composed of vivid characters. For the most part, the vantage point is that of a child or adolescent. The plot is compelling, and I don’t want to give that away. I was genuinely surprised by some of the twists.

It is, however, no secret that Ypi is now an influential leftwing public intellectual who was born in the extremely communist state of Albania and experienced the collapse of that regime when she was a young teenager. One might ask whether she is highly critical of capitalism today because of her formative experiences during a disastrous “transition” to a market economy. Likewise, one might ask whether other people have been anti-communist because they experienced Stalin, or Albania’s Enver Hoxha.

I think Ypi’s answer would be: Yes. Our “biographies” (a fraught word under the Albanian communist system) do shape what we think. Jailing or shooting potential critics was evil, but the Party was not foolish to distrust people whose formative experiences would lean them to anti-Communism. Our circumstances shape us.

The next question might be whether knowing that someone holds a view because of personal experiences invalidates that view. For example, should we discount Ypi’s current politics because she was influenced by extreme circumstances at a formative moment?

Here, her answer would be: No. Our fate is to live at specific times in history. The best we can do is to critically assess the world that we find and work with others to improve it. This is “politics,” in the best sense of that word. It is also “freedom.” To be free is to bring your individual experiences into a consequential public debate with other people who are different from you. That is dangerous or even impossible under a dictatorship, but it is also difficult in contexts like the contemporary European Union, where there is “no politics left, only policy” (p. 227).

If Ypi holds a general political/economic theory, it’s not in her memoir. In fact, she says that she was planning to write a “philosophical book about the overlapping ideas of freedom in the liberal and Socialist traditions” (which sounds like an attempted synthesis), but “when I started writing, ideas turned into people–the people who made me who I am.” She adds: “They loved and fought each other; they had different conceptions of themselves, and of their obligations. They were, as Marx writes, the product of social relations for which they were not responsible, but they still tried to rise above them” (p. 263).

This passage is about as abstract as this book gets. Otherwise, it is about specific people, including the narrator. But the whole memoir conveys the idea that freedom is “trying to rise above” current injustices while treating other human beings as responsible individuals with perspectives of their own.

The epigraph is a quotation from Rosa Luxemburg: “Human beings do not make history of their own free will. But they make history nevertheless.” Ypi vividly and empathetically depicts people who are not free–and who cannot see the truth objectively or independently–but who still strive to make the world better. That is her definition of freedom.

See also: Arendt, freedom, Trump; Hannah Arendt and thinking from the perspective of an agent; don’t confuse bias and judgment; some notes on identity from a civic perspective academic freedom for individuals and for groups; and a case for liberalism.