Values and immigration the real

reasons behind Brexit and Trump

The general perception is the group known as the Left Behinds exerted a
dreadful retribution on the power elite by voting for Brexit and for Donald
Trump. Not so, says Eric Kaufmann, there were other reasons

The shockwaves from Brexit and Trump had barely finished rippling through
leading media outlets before pundits were pronouncing this a protest by the Left
Behind. It was a comforting thesis. Rather than a crisis of cosmopolitan values,
this was really an old-fashioned problem of economic inequality coupled with a
remote power elite. The post-2007 economic crisis and bailouts of rich bankers
by political elites turned the people against their masters. The path to defanging
the new right-wing populism was simple: use traditional policy levers to move
money to deprived communities. At the same time, improve responsiveness to
the concerns of everyday citizens by devolving power away from Westminster and
Washington.
Unfortunately, these narratives are built upon the sands of anecdote and
ideology, rounded off with a crude eyeballing of geographic results. The closer one
gets to fine-grained data, and the more forensically one analyses it, the faster the
mirage disappears. As Ill argue, economics has little to do with Brexit and nothing
to do with Trump.
What matters? Two things values and demographic change
Before addressing these drivers, lets first note what is common knowledge to most
observers of the populist right. That education level, not income, is most closely
correlated with its support. In both the Brexit and Trump cases, average education
level is far more closely aligned with the vote than average income. This is especially
so for whites.1 Income is correlated with education, but there are many successful
people think successful building contractor without qualifications. Similarly,
there are many poor people, such as struggling artists, who have degrees but little
money. When you control for education, income has no effect on whether a white
person voted for, or supports, Trump. With Brexit, income has a small effect.

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 Values and immigration the real reasons behind Brexit and Trump

Why is education especially the line between degree and no degree - so

important? Because it reflects not just material circumstances but worldview. A
number of studies show that those with more open and exploratory psychological
orientations and worldviews in their early teens are more likely to self-select into
university.2 This, much more than the content of the education people receive,
makes them more liberal. In effect, education level offers a window onto the
cultural values of a voting district, which is why its the best predictor of populist
support. The main effect works through individuals: those with a degree were much
less likely to back Brexit/Trump than those without. For instance, in Ashcroft exit
polls, 57 per cent of those with a degree supported Remain. In the British Election
Study (BES), 59 per cent did so, while 39 per cent of those lacking degrees did.3 In
American exit polls, Trump won whites without college degrees 67-28, compared
to 49-45 for whites with degrees.4
In addition, educated people tend to cluster, usually in nodes such as Silicon
Valley where the knowledge economy is most intense. When they do, they set
the tone and can affect the views of those without a degree, and vice-versa. For
instance, those with low qualifications were 16 points less likely to vote to leave the
EU if they lived in an area with the highest as opposed to lowest education levels.
Those with A levels or a degree living in these high-skill areas were 30 points less
likely to have voted Leave than their similarly qualified compatriots living in the
lowest-educated areas.5
The combination of educated individuals voting their worldview, and educated
contexts shaping the worldview of those less educated, results in the sharp
geographic divisions observed in both countries. Add in the effects of ethnic
diversity and age (young and minority voters were less likely to back right-wing
populism) and you arrive in the polarised political geography of 2016. Successful
cities such as London or San Francisco appear to be surrounded by a sea of populist
revolt.
This has little to do with rustics envy of the big smoke but has everything
to do with the educational, age and ethnic composition of liberal cities. Strip
these characteristics out, and there is no difference between city and country. A
white working-class Londoner, for instance, is just as likely to have voted Leave
as a white working-class Cumbrian. And every Leave community has at least a
quarter, and often 40-45 per cent, of the population who voted Remain. The
myth that provincial Britain and urban Britain are different worlds is a gross
exaggeration. The big divide is between individuals in communities. Nonetheless,
as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky subjects of Michael Lewis recent book
The Undoing Project - remind us, our minds are attuned to vivid images such as
rustbelt factories or London caf-sipping elites. This is why the geographic and
class stories work so well. Yet, as another of Lewis classics, Moneyball, revealed, we
would do better to place our trust in the data rather than gut instinct.

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 Eric Kaufmann

The data tell us invisible psychological differences based on core values are more
important than group differences, including ethnicity and education level. Value
divides cut through community, group and family. A good friend of mine works
for Microsoft and is a classic Anywhere, to use David Goodharts phrase for those
who are attached to their mobile credentials and lifestyle.6 He was stunned to find
that while his teenage son was a Remainer, his twin teenage daughters were fervent
Brexiteers. Countless versions of this story unfolded across the country on voting
day.
Values
Values are the social psychological orientations we hold across a wide range of
questions that confront us in everyday life. At the lowest, most general, level
come the so-called Big 5 orientations extraversion, openness, agreeableness,
conscientiousness and neuroticism. On top of these are more domain-specific
orientations of which authoritarianism is one of the most important. These are
typically measured with a suite of questions asking about our views on childrearing,
sentencing for criminals and censorship. Among the Big 5, low openness predicts
support for populist right parties and Brexit. Conscientiousness being fastidious
about ones obligations tends to correlate with populist right support. The
authoritarian-libertarian axis is even more consequential. It crosscuts the economic
left-right dimension, which has structured voting and ideology through much of
the post-war period.
Are these not simply a reflection of the group or community one happens to
inhabit? Yes and no. Young people, the educated and those in liberal spots or
countries are more likely to be libertarian than authoritarian in their values. But
most of the variation in authoritarianism is within-district and within-group, not
between-group. In the BES, it is the authoritarian-libertarian axis that tells us most
about a persons likelihood of having voted Leave, not their views on economic
questions. This four-item scale predicts 12.5 per cent of the variation in Brexit
vote, compared to just 4.9 per cent of the variation in Brexit accounted for by age,
education, income, gender, ethnicity and region combined.
As Jonathan Haidt remarks, twin studies suggest that somewhere between a
third and a half of political behaviour is inherited.7 Karen Stenner argues that
authoritarianism is very deep-rooted, linked to both heredity and personal
biography. Thus it cannot be educated out of people indeed, campaigns that
flag the importance of diversity and dissent are likely to stoke rather than soothe
authoritarians.8 Authoritarianism is a bit of a misnomer: these are not scary people
but the scared seeking protection from what they perceive as a dangerous world.
They are more likely to say people cannot be trusted, and that they fear walking
alone at night. Their preference is for order, security and stability, not diversity
and change. The open-closed schema mentioned by Tony Blair, or Goodharts

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 Values and immigration the real reasons behind Brexit and Trump

Anywhere-Somewhere distinction, come closer than authoritarian in capturing

the essence of this mindset.9
In late August 2016, thanks to funding from Policy Exchange, I fielded two
YouGov surveys, one in the US and one in Britain, each based on a sample
of around 1400.10 The British survey asked people how they had voted in the
Referendum, the American one asked them to rate Trump on a thermometer scale,
from 0 to 10. Surveys included two measures of authoritarianism. The first is based
on a classic, longstanding childrearing question, Is it more important for a child to
be considerate or well-behaved? The questions sound identical, but they differ in
the deep associations they trigger. A well-behaved child obeys the rules of society,
hierarchy and tradition, a considerate child is other-directed and empathetic
within a horizontal world of equal individuals.
I also asked about peoples income, so we are able to evaluate what is more
important, peoples economic circumstances, or their authoritarian values score.
The results are presented in figures 1 and 2, one for each of Brexit and Trump.
Lets begin with the Brexit vote. The sample is skewed 54-46 toward Remain, but
what we are interested in are the differences between Remainers and Brexiteers,
not the absolute levels. Samples are restricted to White British in Britain, and
non-Hispanic whites in America. On the horizontal axis at bottom is income.
On the vertical is the probability that a person reported voting Leave. The slope
of the line indicates the extent to which poor and rich differ in their reported
Brexit vote. The lines also control for age, education, gender and region, so we are
looking only at differences associated with income and this childrearing measure
of authoritarianism.
Note two things. First, the difference between the endpoints of both lines
between the poorest (at left) and richest (at right) is only five points and this is
not statistically different from chance. So white Leavers are poorer than white
Remainers, but this is only a small difference. By contrast, the gap between lines is
substantial and significantly different from what could have occurred by accident.
This means those who answered considerate to the authoritarianism question
(lower line) have only a 35-40 per cent likelihood (depending on income) to have
voted out compared to those who said well-mannered, represented by the higher
line at 55-65 per cent likelihood. In fact, the difference between the lines is 20-25
points, five times that for income.
When we move to a more domain-specific question such as support for the
death penalty, the relationship becomes even stronger. In work I did on the EU
referendum voting intentions using the British Election Study, those most opposed
to capital punishment on a five-point scale, once demographics were taken into
consideration, had only a 20 per cent chance of voting Leave, compared to 75 per
cent for those most in favour.11 Values, not income, tell us how people voted.

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 Eric Kaufmann

Figure 1: Source: YouGov-Policy Exchange survey, August 17-18, 2016

Its much the same story in the US in figure 2, where this time, wealthier whites
rate Trump half a point higher on a 0-10 thermometer scale than poor whites.
So much for all those images of rustbelt towns, tales of opioid addiction and
the mournful strains of J. D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy. Those are poignant stories
that make good copy and sell books, but they overstate the importance of group
membership and class compared to the inner psychology of Trump supporters.
What matters is, once again, authoritarianism, which is only partly linked to group
and region. In figure 2, white Americans who answered that it was more important
for children to be considerate scored Trump an average of two points lower than
those who said it was more important for them to be well-mannered. Income
makes no significant difference.
The second major value set which Stenner mentions is conservatism. This
describes those who wish to minimise change, an orientation that overlaps with
authoritarianism. But whereas authoritarians are opposed to diversity and dissent,
even if present for generations, conservatives are only opposed to diversity if it
represents a change from a past they once knew. The question, Things in America/
Britain were better in the past, nicely measures this orientation. In both the US
and Britain, this has a similar power to the four-item authoritarianism scale in
predicting support for Trump and Brexit.

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 Values and immigration the real reasons behind Brexit and Trump

Figure 2: Source: YouGov-Policy Exchange survey, August 17-18, 2016

Anti-elitism matters less than income for the Brexit vote. Which is to say it
doesnt count for much. The BES asked a series of questions of its 25,000 sample,
including whether people trust MPs and whether they would rather put their trust
in ordinary people than politicians. Neither significantly predicts a Brexit vote
when other factors are considered. A set of populism questions were also asked on
a smaller sub-sample, including whether people agreed that the politicians in the
UK parliament need to follow the will of the people. This had only a borderline
impact on Brexit voting intention, which was not significant after authoritarianism
and conservatism were added to the model.
Finally, just in case you think resentment of elites lies behind all this, consider
the following question, What annoys you most about the American elite?
Respondents to a small survey of 361 Americans I ran on March 19, 2017 could
answer they are politically correct, they are rich and powerful, or they dont
annoy me. While this is far from a large sample, it turns out Trump voters were
actually less anti-elite than Clinton voters, with just 60 per cent saying elites
annoyed them, compared to 64 per cent of Clinton voters. This is not significant
given the sample size. But the real difference lay in which kind of elite rankled each
voter. While there is a baseline resentment of elites in the US population for being
rich and powerful, this was cited by 55 per cent of Clinton supporters but just 27
per cent of Trump voters. By contrast, 34 per cent of Trump voters but only 9 per
cent of Clinton voters cited political correctness as their main anti-elite gripe.
Thus Trump voters are better characterised as anti-liberal elite than anti-elite.

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 Eric Kaufmann

Ethnic demography
We have established that authoritarian and conservative values, not deprivation
or anti-elitism, drove Brexit and Trump. But this cannot answer the why now?
question. In order to do so, we need to bring in demography, specifically ethnic
change and immigration. In my YouGov-Policy Exchange data, I ask people what
the most important issue facing the country is. Nearly 40 per cent of those who
gave Trump 0 out of 10 said inequality was the top issue facing America. Among
those rating the Donald 10 out of 10, just 4 per cent agreed.
By contrast, immigration is the top concern for 25 per cent of white Trump
backers but hardly registers among Trump detractors. An Ipsos-Mori study during
the primaries came to the same conclusion: opposition to immigration, and
a cluster of orientations dubbed nativism, not economic worries, best explain
support for Trump.12 For Brexiteers, its a similar story, with 43 per cent of those
who voted Leave citing immigration as the most important issue facing Britain
compared to only 5 per cent of Remainers. The picture for inequality is the reverse:
20 per cent of Remainers, but barely 5 per cent of Leavers, call it their top concern.
So much for the Left Behind thesis.
The US was about 90 per cent white in 1960; it is 63 per cent white today
and more than half of American babies are now from ethnic minorities. Most
white Americans already think they are in the minority, and more high-identifying
whites are beginning to vote in an ethnopolitical way. The last time the share of
foreign born in America reached current levels was the 1900-1920 period when
immigration restrictionist sentiment was at fever pitch. We should not be surprised
to see this issue rising to the fore.
Ethnic change can happen nationally or locally, and it matters in both Britain
and America. Figure 3, which includes a series of demographic and area controls,
looks at the rate of Latino increase in a white American survey respondents zip code
(average population around 30,000 in this data). The share of white Americans
rating Trump 10 out of 10 rises from just over 25 per cent in locales with no
ethnic change to almost 70 per cent in places with a 30-point increase in Latino
population.
The town of Arcadia in Wisconsin fittingly a state that has flipped to Trump
profiled in a recent Wall Street Journal article, shows what can happen. Thomas
Vicino has chronicled the phenomenon in other towns, such as Farmers Branch,
Texas or Carpentersville, Illinois.13 There are very few zip codes that have seen
change on this scale, hence the small sample and wide error bars toward the right.
Still, this confirms what virtually all the academic research shows: rapid ethnic
change leads to an increase in anti-immigration sentiment and populism, even if
this subsequently fades. The news also spreads and can shape the wider climate of
public opinion, even in places untouched by immigration.

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 Values and immigration the real reasons behind Brexit and Trump

Figure 3: Source: YouGov-Policy Exchange survey, August 17-18, 2016

In Britain, its a similar story: when we control for the level of minorities in a
ward, local ethnic change is linked with a significantly higher rate of Brexit voting.
From under 40 per cent voting Brexit in places with no ethnic change to over 60
per cent voting Leave in the fastest changing districts such as Barking in London
or Boston in Lincolnshire.
Values and demography
Put values and demography together and you get political polarisation: authoritarians
and conservatives respond negatively to diversity and change, while libertarians
and liberals embrace it. Consider the relationship between authoritarianism and
immigration attitudes in Europe in figure 4, based on data for 16,000 native-
born white respondents to the 2014 European Social Survey. Authoritarians, who
place a high value on safe and secure surroundings, are more likely to perceive
immigrants as making their countries a worse place to live. But in countries with
low Muslim populations (e.g. Ireland or Finland, where Muslims are less than 1
per cent), authoritarians and others dont diverge much in their anti-immigration
views: 3 per cent of those who say safety and security are important strongly agree
that immigrants make their country worse compared to 2 per cent for others.
Now look at the right side of the chart, where data is drawn from countries
where Muslims exceed 4 per cent of the population. The gap between the red and
blue lines is now over twice as large, with more than 6 per cent of safety-conscious

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 Eric Kaufmann

individuals now strongly anti-immigrant. If you are white and less concerned
about safe and secure surroundings, the share of Muslims in your country has only
a small impact on your view of immigrants. If you care about safety and security,
Muslim share makes a big difference to those views.14 This shows how demographic
shifts interact with values to create political polarisation.

Figure 4: Source: Data from European Social Survey 2014. N=16,029. Pseudo R2=
.084. Controls for country income; also individual income, education and age.
Countries: Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France,
Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Conclusion
Value differences and immigration, not inequality and anti-elitism, fuelled the
Trump and Brexit votes. In this era, the values divide especially the question
of whether western societies should become increasingly diverse is emerging as
the primary axis of politics. Economic questions are losing their centrality even as
mainstream politicians stubbornly insist on viewing the new nationalism through
old spectacles.
Notes
1
Silver, N. (2016). Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote for Trump. Five
Thirty-Eight. November 22; Brexit: voter turnout by age, Financial Times, June 24, 2016

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 Values and immigration the real reasons behind Brexit and Trump
2
Surridge, P. (2016). Education and liberalism: pursuing the link. Oxford Review of
Education 42(2): 146-164; Lancee, B. and O. Sarrasin (2015). Educated Preferences or
Selection Effects? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Educational Attainment on
Attitudes Towards Immigrants. European Sociological Review 31(4): 490-501.
3
Fieldhouse, E., et al. (2016). British Election Study, 2016: General Election Results
Dataset [computer file], July.
4
Election 2016: Exit Polls, NewYorkTimes https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/
us/politics/election-exit-polls.html
5
Goodwin, M. J. and O. Heath (2016). The 2016 Referendum, Brexit and the Left
Behind: An Aggregate-level Analysis of the Result. The Political Quarterly 87(3): 323-
332.
6
Goodhart, D. 2017. The Road to Somewhere (London: Hurst)
7
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind : why good people are divided by politics and
religion. London, Allen Lane.
8
Stenner, K. (2005). The authoritarian dynamic, Cambridge University Press.
9
Goodhart, <i>Road to Somewhere</i>; Blair, T. (2017). Against Populism, the Centre
Must Hold. <i>New York Times</i>, March 3.
10
For data, see: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document
/u12mloq9ox/PolicyExchangeResults_160907_Authoritarianism_UK.pdf;
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/aage6nsrqj/
PolicyExchangeResults_160907_Authoritarianism_US.pdf
11
Kaufmann, Eric. 2016. Trump and Brexit: why its again NOT the economy, stupid,
LSE British Politics blog, November 9
12
Young, C. (2016). Its Nativism: Explaining the Drivers of Trumps Popular Support.
Ipsos, September.
13
Vicino, T. J. (2012). Suburban crossroads: The fight for local control of immigration
policy, Lexington Books.
14
ESS Round 7: European Social Survey Round 7 Data (2014). Data file edition 2.1.
NSD - Norwegian Centre for Research Data, Norway Data Archive and distributor of
ESS data for ESS ERIC.

Note on contributor
Eric Kaufmann is Professor of Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. He is writing a
new book entitled Whiteshift: immigration, populism and the myth of majority decline.
Penguin will publish it in 2018.

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