The 2017 French presidential election is but one example of the move away from the traditional left-right political axis. This column argues that subjective variables are key to understanding this shift. Votes on the traditional left-right axis are correlated with views on redistribution and predicted by socioeconomic variables such as income and social status. Votes in the 2017 election in France, however, appear to have been driven by individual and subjective variables, with low well-being associated with ‘anti-system' opinions (on the left or the right) and low interpersonal trust associated with right-wing populism.
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