Economic insecurity, racial anxiety, and right‐wing populism

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• Author: Alessio Rebechi,Nicholas Rohde
• Date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12599

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Review of Income and Wealth

Series 69, Number 3, September 2023

DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12599

ECONOMIC INSECURITY, RACIAL ANXIETY, AND

RIGHT-WING POPULISM

BY ALESSIO REBECHI∗and NICHOLAS ROHDE

Department of Accounting, Finance and Economics,Grifth University

This paper studies the roles of economic insecurity (EI) and attitudes to racial inequality as predictors

of voting patterns in the 2016 US election. Using data from the 2016Voter Survey, we show that both

perceptions of EI and concerns over anti-White discriminationare signicant correlates of Republican

support. Effect sizes on racial attitudes are much larger than those found on EI, although the effects

of insecurity become larger when accounting for both short-term and long-term economic stress. We

also show there is very little heterogeneityin the effects of insecurity across racial groups—both Whites

and minorities are more likely to voteRepublican when experiencing short-term insecurity. Our results

suggest that policies that mitigate micro-level economic risk may lessen support for populist political

candidates.

JEL Codes: D63, D72

Keywords:economic insecurity, racial anxiety, Trump, voting preference

1. INTRODUCTION

Populism has received renewed attention in the public and academic debate in

the past few years, particularly after Donald Trump’s election and the Brexit ref-

erendum in 2016. Dened as an ideology based on the antagonism between “the

pure people” and the “corrupted elite” (Mudde, 2004), populism combines differ-

ent ideologies (socialism, nationalism) according to the sociopolitical context in

which it emerges (Mudde, 2004; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018). In contem-

porary times, right-wing populism is the most common form. It has been on the

rise in Europe and in the US since the past decade, with populist right-wing parties

consistently increasing their vote share. With its ideological features of nativismand

authoritarianism, the surge of right-wing populism is a reason for concern among

social scientists.

There is no clear consensus on the causes of this recent upsurge, with two

main explanations proposed in the literature. The Economic Insecurity (hence-

forward EI) thesis identies the economic distress and displacement caused

by globalization as one of the main drivers of the populist demand (Guiso

et al.,2017; Rodrik, 2018; Colantone and Stanig, 2018b; Bossert et al.,2019;

Note: Any errors are the authors’ sole responsibility.

*Correspondence to: Alessio Rebechi, Department of Accounting, Finance and Eco-

nomics, Grifth University, 170 Kessels Rd, Nathan QLD, 4111, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

(alessio.rebechi@grifthuni.edu.au).

© 2022 The Authors.Review of Income and Wealth published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of

International Association forResearch in Income and Wealth.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in anymedium, provided the original work is

properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modicationsor adaptations are made.

701

Review of Income and Wealth, Series 69, Number 3, September 2023

Vlandas and Halikiopoulou, 2019; Guiso et al.,2020; Rodrik, 2021). Instead,

the Cultural Backlash thesis discusses populism as a reaction against the rise

of progressive and post-materialist values (Norris and Inglehart, 2016; Nor-

ris and Inglehart, 2019) or an identity response against the perceived loss

of cultural dominance (Norris and Inglehart, 2016;Mutz,2018; Norris and

Inglehart, 2019).

This debate is controversial and ongoing. Despite the evidence that EI plays

a role for support of right-wing populism (Guriev and Papaioannou, 2020),

political scientists argue that it is of marginal relevance compared to cultural

factors (Margalit, 2019). Our paper contributes to this debate by testing the

two hypotheses of EI and cultural backlash, analyzing data from the US 2016

presidential election. In particular, we consider the roles of EI and one cultural

factor, perceived reverse discrimination (PRD), in predicting support for Don-

ald Trump. We nd that both perceived reverse discrimination and EI play a

signicant role, although perceived reverse discrimination is quantitatively more

important.

We further argue that some denitional and measurement issues associated

with EI have led to its impact on behavior being understated. For example, EI

is generally concerned with short-term risks, but anxiety may be driven more

by longer-term problems such as stagnation or a sense of falling behind. To

address this, we identify two comparable sets of variables that capture both

short-term and long-term EI, and contrast these with the variable that cap-

tures voters’ perceptions of anti-White discrimination. Although we nd that

the effects of perceived reverse discrimination are always bigger, we nd the

role of EI is increased when we consider the long- and short-term denitions

combined.

The effect of EI could differ across racial groups. We therefore consider

the interaction between EI and race. Surprisingly, we nd that coefcients on

short-term EI do not change sign when interacted with markers of racial minor-

ity status. In fact, we nd very little heterogeneity in the effects of insecurity

across racial groups. Thus, short-term EI seems to predict support for right-wing

populism in minorities as well as White voters. This is notable for two reasons.

First, EI is often framed as a wedge issue pitting the interests of the White

sub-population against minority counterparts. Second, in the absence of racial

politics, we would expect EI to predict support for parties that wish to expand

social safety nets. The behavior of our minority sample suggests that this is not

the case.

In addition, we consider the interaction between our key variables and vot-

ing history as a way to identify the role of EI and perceived reverse discrimina-

tion in switching toward a populist candidate. We nd that both our measures of

EI are important drivers for non-former Republican voters (FRVs) to switch in

2016, although perceived reverse discrimination had the bigger effect. These nd-

ings are further supported when we restrict the analysis to Obama voters in the

two previous elections (2012 and 2008). We nd that EI and perceived reverse dis-

crimination play a signicant role in explaining the switch from Obama in 2012 to

Trump in 2016.

© 2022 The Authors.Review of Income and Wealth published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of

International Association forResearch in Income and Wealth.

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