Education and immigration are main primers for voter choices
The economists Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas Piketty, who work at the World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics, asked some interesting questions in a study published in early May. The three researchers collected data from several Western democracies. Immigrant voters distinguish themselves by choosing the left.
Published: June 13, 2021, 10:45 am
The result is a scientific study that actually provides revealing insights into long-term voter preferences and migration in a total of 21 Western democracies. The three scientists created a database that shows exactly how voters from different socio-economic backgrounds acted at the ballot box in over 300 elections between 1948 and 2020.
Education as the most crucial criterion
The authors present what is probably the most serious finding right at the start: In the 1950s and 1960s, voters with a low level of education and low incomes felt they had a close connection with “labour, social democratic, socialist and similar parties”. Gradually, however, the tie was broken. The voters of the left-wing parties increasingly consisted of more highly educated supporters.
In terms of income, however, little has changed since the 1950s. High-income groups continue to flock to parties to the right of the centre. Although the difference between left and right converges here as well. In 2016 and 2020, the “top ten percent of income earners in the USA were more likely to vote for the Democratic Party for the first time since World War II”. And it is precisely the right-wing political parties that are critical of immigration in Europe that are increasingly attracting low-income citizens. The “merchant right”, however, as Piketty and his team call that high-income electorate, still feel most comfortable with conservative and liberal parties.
Voter migration
The development led to a “multi-elite party system” in the 2000s and 2010s, the authors write. What the three researchers mean by this is that elites with a high level of education now voted on the left, while elites with high incomes continued to vote on the right. “This transition has been accelerated by the rise of the green and anti-immigration movements, the main distinguishing feature of which is that they concentrate the votes of the electorate with higher and lower levels of education.
Today’s voter preferences
However, according to the study, the new system apparently resulted in an increased number of non-voters. In fact, according to the data, turnout by voters in the bottom 50 percent (for both education and income) has fallen sharply in a number of countries. The willingness to participate remained at a constant level among voters in the top 50 percent. This could “be interpreted as a sign that socially disadvantaged voters felt they were being left out by the rise of the ‘multi-elite’ party systems,” the authors conclude.
At the same time, a look at the preferences for parties based on age, contradicts common clichés. “We couldn’t find any evidence that younger generations have become more left than they were in the 1950s,” the researchers note. Instead, however, one can see a noticeable reversal of the educational gap within the generations. “Older voters with a lower level of education continue to vote ‘along the class lines’ and thus support the left.” At the same time, social democratic and green parties have attracted a growing proportion of the electorate with a higher level of education among the youth.
The gap between town and country as well as the religious gap “remained stable in most of the countries in our data set”. Rural areas and religious voters continued to support more conservative parties, just as they did in the 1950s to 1960s. “In other words, green parties may find more support from young, urban and non-religious voters, but that doesn’t make them fundamentally different from the traditional left. Education, not age, geography or religion, seems to be a more fundamental source of the reorientation of the party system,” the authors concluded.
Who do Muslims choose?
The study also takes a closer look at the voting behaviour of immigrants. The decolonization process in Western Europe caused an increase in immigration at an early stage. The opening of international borders, globalization and the refugee crisis from 2015 accelerated the influx from non-European countries. Many of these immigrants and their descendants acquired citizenship of the respective country, which also gave them the right to vote in national elections. The election statistics show that a significant proportion of the new citizens felt drawn to social democratic parties despite a lack of education.
How do Muslims vote?
According to the available data for the years 2010 to 2020, a “nativistic split” can be demonstrated, as the study highlighted. “We find that immigrants are generally much more supportive of social democratic and related parties than natives.” The difference is even greater if one only looks at Muslim voters. In Germany, a Muslim electoral vote is almost 25 percentage points more likely than a non-Muslim vote to go to the SPD, the Greens or the Left. In countries like Great Britain, Sweden or France, the proportion is even over 40 percent.
This leads left-green parties to accelerate the naturalization of non-European, especially Muslim immigrants, in order to win over new voters.
Universities are leftist incubators
Another study by two German social scientists Matthias Revers and Richard Traunmüller, in 2020 showed the “surprisingly great willingness” of social science students to restrict freedom of expression, according to the FAZ. The alleged surprise about the result of the investigation is a great irony as many educational institutions today are controlled by woke leftists, suggesting that “education” could be likened to brainwashing.
The President of the German Association of Universities, Bernhard Kempen, also complained about a “narrowed discourse corridor” at universities in Germany. Only topics such as “gender justice”, the “plight of refugees” and climate change are allowed while populists and anti-constitutionalists have no place there, Kempen told Deutschlandfunk last year.
All rights reserved. You have permission to quote freely from the articles provided that the source (www.freewestmedia.com) is given. Photos may not be used without our consent.
Consider donating to support our work
Help us to produce more articles like this. FreeWestMedia is depending on donations from our readers to keep going. With your help, we expose the mainstream fake news agenda.
Keep your language polite. Readers from many different countries visit and contribute to Free West Media and we must therefore obey the rules in, for example, Germany. Illegal content will be deleted.
If you have been approved to post comments without preview from FWM, you are responsible for violations of any law. This means that FWM may be forced to cooperate with authorities in a possible crime investigation.
If your comments are subject to preview by FWM, please be patient. We continually review comments but depending on the time of day it can take up to several hours before your comment is reviewed.
We reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, contain slander or foul language, or are irrelevant to the discussion.

Thousands of Flemish farmers block roads in Brussels against nitrogen policy
BrusselsMore than 2500 farmers from Belgium's Dutch-speaking Flanders region gathered at Brussels' central Arts-Loi street and blocked roads with tractors toward Brussels to protest the regional government's plan to limit nitrogen emissions.

Orban: EU energy sanctions costing citizens billions
BudapestHungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has warned that some western states could soon send troops to Ukraine. He also criticized the fact that the EU sanctions against Russia had cost Hungarian taxpayers tens of billions of euros.

Italy: New leader of the Social Democrats is one of Soros’ ‘preferred politicians’
RomeDuring the election campaign, Elly Schlein presented herself as the standard-bearer of the poorest. However, her background and previous work raise doubts about her honesty.

UK greenhouses shut down due to high energy costs
LondonIn Great Britain, a particularly depressing facet of the crisis is now showing its first contours - and thus anticipating what is likely to happen in other European countries in the near future: because of the exploding energy prices, agriculture is being strangled and fresh produce has to be rationed.

Lisbon opens borders to all Portuguese speakers
LisbonNot only the German and Italian governments keep opening new paths for immigration. Portugal, too, has opened a Pandora's box and is paving the way for possibly millions of non-European immigrants to the EU – something which is not mentioned by the mainstream media.

Illegal immigration to Italy has reached its highest level ever
RomeIn Italy, despite the overwhelming right-wing electoral success in September, there is still nothing to be seen of the promised asylum turnaround – on the contrary. Giorgia Meloni has been in office for five months, but the arrivals of migrants in Italy have doubled compared to the previous year.

Dismantling diplomacy with ‘feminist foreign policy’
BudapestGerman Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) wants to counter German security issues abroad with feminist politics. Gender training, LGBTQ events and quotas are now part of their new guidelines, which are intended to bring about "cultural change". The German ambassador to Hungary, Julia Gross, provided an embarrassing example.

Germans demand investigation of Nord Stream sabotage
BerlinAfter the sensational revelations by US investigative reporter Seymour Hersh about the perpetrators of the Nord Stream attacks on September 26, 2022, the German government has remained silent. It does not want to comment on Hersh's research results, according to which the pipelines were blown up by Americans and Norwegians.

Macron mulling withdrawal of Putin’s Legion of Honour award
ParisAt the end of Jacques Chirac's term in 2007, France and Russia still maintained cordial relations. During his speech at a tripartite summit, the French president had even mentioned bilateral relations that were "excellent in all respects, particularly in the fields of energy, infrastructure and aeronautics".