4 Trends You Need to Know

More evidence on the 'realignment' of Western politics

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If you really want to make sense of how politics is being transformed then you need to step back and look at four key trends that are unfolding beneath the surface. That’s the message from an important new study just released in the United States.

Drawing on an enormous amount of new data, and some truly fascinating charts, it shows why, unlike the British Tories, Donald Trump and the Republicans have a very good chance of enjoying a major election victory later this year.

Why?

Because unlike the hapless Tories, Donald Trump and the Republicans are still very much in tune with the much wider ‘realignment’ of politics that has been unfolding across the West for more than a decade.

I’ve written a lot about this ‘realignment’ —about how working-class voters, people without university degrees, and older voters are shifting to the right, while the professional middle-class, graduates, and also women are shifting to the left.

I first pointed to this realignment more than a decade ago —long before the shock rise of Brexit and Donald Trump. And in the years since it’s only become more visible, going on to completely upend and reshape the political world.

It powered the rise of Nigel Farage and other national populists in Europe. It pushed Brexit over the line in 2016. It sent Donald Trump into the White House a few months later. It allowed the British Tory Theresa May to attract a stronger, more working-class following in 2017, albeit while failing to win a majority. And it then enabled Boris Johnson to win a commanding 80 seat majority in 2019, much of which came from his success across Labour’s working-class Red Wall.

At one point, I even found myself in Number 10 Downing Street explaining this realignment to Boris Johnson and his team, warning them unless they embrace these changes, unless they ‘lean into’ this realignment by prioritising their new working-class, non-graduate, older and more culturally conservative voters, then they and their party would soon find their support collapsing in the polls.

All realignments, I told them, are about demand and supply. It’s no good just having public demand for a different kind of politics; what you also need is to continually supply this demand with the right kind of messages, the right kind of policies, and the right kind of priorities. Without demand and supply, realignments fall apart.

And this is exactly what happened.

The British Tories tapped into a realignment they neither understood nor showed any serious interest in sustaining and expanding once they’d returned to office. By failing to lower immigration, by failing to control the borders, by failing to push back against radical ‘woke’ ideology, by failing to prioritise and promote their new voters, they now find themselves hurtling toward a heavy and historic defeat.

But now look at what’s unfolding in America.

With the help of a fascinating new study, and some truly compelling charts, we can see just how different things are across the pond where, unlike the Tories, the Republicans have managed to remain firmly committed to this realignment.

What I’m about to show you are four key trends which not only help to explain why Trump has, in my view, more than a good chance of returning to the White House in November but also where so many other parties around the world have gone wrong.