Voting against self-interest

The economic aspects of the Republican ideological agenda are driven by the concerns of the super-rich. Surprisingly though, the bulk of Republican voters are lower-income workers

The US midterm elections confirmed the “Cold Civil War” thesis some commentators have been touting. US voters are mostly frozen on either side of a high ideological fence. Unlike in the historical Civil War where the Mason-Dixon Line demarcated Southern slave-owning states from the Northern non-slave-owning states, this ideological fence is less easy to define.

Prior to 2020, pollsters bemoaned low voter turnout and election strategists tried to “swing” a great central mass of citizens, who didn’t bother to vote. The last two elections (the 2020 presidential race and the 2022 midterms) have seen extraordinarily high turnouts, including rising turnouts of