Matthew Yglesias at Slow Boring:
Almost all theories in elite discourse about why people vote for right-wing populism posit that deindustrialization or free trade or “neoliberalism” or some other thing that left-wing intellectuals think is bad induces support for political parties on the right.
A simpler explanation is that a significant minority of the public in most Western countries agrees with right-wing cultural politics.
I tend to believe that the latter is true.
For example, many rank-and-file G.O.P. primary voters circa 2015 were a bit more moderate than Republican leaders on topics like Social Security and Medicare but more right-wing on immigration and crime. So when Trump offered that set of issue positions during the primaries, his platform resonated with a lot of voters.
This hypothesis tends to be under-explored in the scholarly literature, I think, because researchers are overwhelmingly left-wing themselves.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.