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$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. There's a kind of mood that's turned where people are like, yes, we're past our peak, in a sense. And that, for a European immigrant in the United States, is very unusual, right? Because it was what still appeals many people to come here. And it's almost French, in a sense. I mean, the French were always pessimistic. Ooh, savage, savage. ♪
Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk, and there are more people voting in 2024 than ever before. This year, elections are taking place in at least 64 countries as well as the European Union, totaling almost
half of the world's population. Now, not all of these elections are democratic. They fall on a spectrum. And many have already happened. Most recently, there were elections in India, Mexico, and the European Union. And a couple, like snap elections in France and the UK, are coming up soon. And then there is, of course, this fall, our election here in the United States, in case you forgot.
Today, we're going to talk about the trends that we're seeing around the world in terms of how voters have been behaving and whether that means anything for us here in the U.S. If you remember back to the summer of 2016, in fact, the early days of this podcast, some suggested that Brexit's victory was an early indicator that Trump could be successful. Others disagreed, but either way,
Although the through line wasn't perfect, there were at least some commonalities in the trends that led to both. This year, it looks like there are feelings of deep dissatisfaction across the globe, according to an international poll of 24 Democratic candidates.
countries conducted by the AP earlier this year, a median of 59% say they were dissatisfied with how democracy was working in their own country, and a median of 75% said they don't believe elected officials care what people like them think. So we're going to discuss it all. And here with me is Richard Weick, managing director of Pew's Global Attitudes Research. Welcome to the podcast, Richard. Thanks for having me.
And also here with us is Matthias Matthijs, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome to the podcast, Matthias. Pleasure to be on it. All right. So I think I already hinted at one, but if we could start off with you, Richard, have we seen thus far clear trends across the globe in terms of how voters are feeling in democratic elections? Yeah.
Yeah, well, one of the things we see in our surveys is that there's a lot of dissatisfaction with the way democracy is working, right? We actually just put out some new research on that this week, and we show that, you know, across 35 countries, 45% of the people are satisfied with the way democracy is functioning. So, you know, people continue to value representative democracy. They think it's a good way to govern their countries, right?
but they're frustrated with the way it's working. They're frustrated with the way representation is working. And I think that can manifest itself in different ways in different elections. You know, I mean, there's always going to be country specific factors that drive the outcome in any given election. But this dissatisfaction is a bit of a global trend. In many countries, it has risen over the last few years.
And I think it's one of the reasons why we see what we used to think of as sort of alternative parties, alternative leaders becoming a part of the political establishment. Right. We've seen party systems sort of shaken by public frustration. We've seen new parties and leaders arise. And I think that's all part of this frustration that people feel with the way their political systems are functioning.
Rich is absolutely right. I think the dissatisfaction with both
the way democracies work and fail to deliver, whether it's public services or whether it's the kind of direct demands. The other thing you see, I mean, especially in Western democracies, there are two things that seem to be mutually reinforcing, right? One is the sort of political economy dynamic of urban-rural divides that seem to be getting stronger, meaning where the growth, where the jobs are, tend to be in these kind of
urban centers, especially these global metropoles that tend to vote more and more in progressive ways for progressive agendas, especially socially.
And then these rural parts that are a much smaller part of the economy, but that have plenty of people still there that feel completely left behind. And that creates these sorting mechanisms where especially younger people, better educated people that come from these rural parts tend to leave as soon as they graduate from high school and leave the house to these kind of urban centers and are then socialized in a certain politics that then reinforces the sort of feeling of being left behind
rural parts of the West and many democracies that then are even further left behind. And that's then often mixed with a cultural dynamic where also it seems that like the more traditional approaches to life are being questioned by political elites that are representing these progressive values much better. And I have to ask because we're talking about a
elections that are taking place beyond the United States and Europe. I think we're pretty familiar with the trend you described in the West. Are we also seeing that in places like India or South Africa or Argentina, where elections are also taking place this year? I mean, to some extent, yes. But I don't know what the whole storyline is about families all being uniquely unhappy in their own unique way. I mean, many countries, whether they are liberal democratic or
more on the sort of competitive authoritarian side of the spectrum, right? Where there's elections that are free, but they're not necessarily fair. There is a sense that governments are not delivering, right? If you mentioned Argentina, it's probably hugely economic there, where one economic crisis after the other has led to voters just kind of throwing up their hands and trying more radical experiments because what do they have to lose?
In a place like South Africa and India, I think there's more of an anti-incumbency mode. I mean, South Africa became democratic in the early 1990s, and the ANC party, Nelson Mandela's party, has basically been in power uninterruptedly. I mean, at some point, that leads to clientelist practices and so on, and people revolt against it. India is more interesting because Narendra Modi hasn't been in power for that long, right? Two terms.
But you've seen a sort of erosion of democratic practices there as well, where he's consolidated power. I mean, everybody expected him to do very well, consolidate that power. And actually, it was the opposite to some extent, where there was quite a pushback, right? So in that sense, I think, as Richard mentioned earlier, people seem to value democratic choice.
And they see this as a good system, but that doesn't mean that they're happy with what they're seeing in front of them from anybody who's in government right now. The one thing I would add is that, you know, I think if you're looking at what's driving this kind of frustration, people feel this discontent.
Certainly economics is part of the story. Certainly it's cultural issues, social issues. I think politics itself is part of the story too. When people feel frustrated with the way politics is working, that exacerbates their frustrations on economics or on social issues, right? So I think you may have mentioned this, Galen, but we conducted a survey last year around the world and we saw big majorities in
just about every country we surveyed saying, "I don't think elected officials in my country care what people like me think." Big numbers in many countries said, "There's no political party out there that represents me." And it's kind of easy to dismiss those findings. I think people have never loved politicians. They're always going to have criticisms and things like that. But I think if you look at what's happening politically around the world, what's happened in recent years,
I think maybe we've got to take those kind of findings more seriously, right? People are telling us that some fundamental aspect of representation really isn't working the way they want it to work. That leads them then to look for alternative parties, alternative leaders, maybe alternative ways of doing democracy. We also see a lot of support for direct democracy in many countries. Things like citizens' assemblies are popular in many countries, right?
So people are willing maybe to go around elites and around the political class if they're frustrated enough with them and they don't feel like that political class is responsive to them. So politics itself, I think, exacerbates these issues.
cultural and economic frustrations people have. Okay, so I'm hearing that there's a lot of dissatisfaction and that in some ways dissatisfaction with all aspects of society may be exacerbated by dissatisfaction with politics. But at some point, we got to put our finger on the root of the problem in a way. Like, where is all of this dissatisfaction coming from? I understand that culture exacerbates
exacerbates politics, politics exacerbates culture. Is it an economic thing? Is it a post-COVID related thing? Is it globalization and immigration? Is it social media? How have you gone about trying to explain this
this phenomenon of dissatisfaction? The way I look at it, I mean, take the United Kingdom as a case you mentioned, right? Where the broad populist revolt in the West, you could say, started in the spring of 2016. There's an all-time low of people under 30 dying
buying their own house, right? So that, let's say in the 1950s, 1960s, there might have been 20 to 30% of people under 30 that had started a family, bought a house, right? Went sort of about their lives. Now it's barely 10%, right? So
That's one example of the economic dissatisfaction. People feel, especially young people, that everything is being postponed. And of course, it's not just young people that feel this. It's their parents that at the same time are frustrated with the fact that as much as they may even try to help them a bit,
with, let's say, the beginning of a down payment, you already have to be upper middle class for this. And let's say you can't even do that. Every year you wait, house prices seem to go up. And in that sense, interest rates haven't come down. So I think that currently, you mentioned COVID, the post-COVID dynamic of high inflation and high interest rate that you especially see in the housing market is very outspoken.
Secondly, the cost of living crisis, right, is it's one of those things where inflation and people don't take the technical definition of inflation at face value, right? The idea that compared to June 2023, the consumer price index has only gone up by like 2.7% or something. What people think about is in the last few years, everything has gotten way more expensive, right? And actually, I want somebody who brings prices down again, right? And by that logic...
In the US, I mean, every president has done poorly, right? Because there's been very few presidents that presided over falling prices. But that's the way people seem to be thinking about it. There's a generational story here as well. And that's, again, something COVID-19
seem to have exacerbated, right? For many people, it seemed that these lockdowns, the official policies of many democracies were to protect the elderly at the expense of the young. And that lasted for quite a long, I mean, everybody was willing to do this for a few weeks, maybe even a few months, but not for two years, right? And so that seems to have done damage while at the same time increase house prices led to a bout of inflation that is kind of a toxic mix, I feel, at the time of our politics.
We have seen in our data that in a number of high-income democracies, dissatisfaction with democracy has risen in the last three years or so post-COVID. So that's a very clear pattern in our data.
I would also add on the economy, I agree with Matthias that when you're trying to understand how people think about the economy, I think you need to consider that they're thinking about a sort of long-term economic picture. It's not just the latest jobs report or the latest quarterly growth numbers, those kinds of things. In our data, we've seen, especially in more
high-income advanced economies that big percentages of the public tell us that they expect the next generation to be worse off financially than their parents. People are looking at the economy and they're saying that the long-term trajectory for our children doesn't look good. And that's
influencing how they feel about the state of the country, how they feel about the state of democracy and other things, right? So I think that kind of long-term economic pessimism that you see in high-income countries is a big, big factor shaping public opinion. It looks different in a number of middle-income nations, places that have experienced, you know, overall a fair amount of growth over the past couple of decades. They're more optimistic about the future, but in a number of wealthier democracies, there's a lot of pessimism about the future of the economy.
One thing we haven't really talked about that seems to be the glue of all far-right parties
is immigration, right? And there's an immigration side, I think, in countries that see a lot of immigrants, and that's mostly in the advanced industrial states of the West. But at the same time, there's then all these countries that see emigration, right? The people that are leaving, and they're almost like two sides of the same coin. So the countries that see a lot of immigration, it only increases that anxiety. They're changing the character of their country, which is especially something that older people worry about.
And then younger people worry about things from jobs and them driving down wages, right? Especially in the services sector, whether it's hospitality or anything like this.
But others like anything from changing the dynamics of people going out in the weekend, right? Where it's suddenly a very different atmosphere in what they were used to and especially in smaller towns that people react to. On the other hand, in the emigrating countries, it also changes the makeup of the democracy, right? So one favorite example of mine is Hungary. So Viktor Orban has managed to consolidate his power over the last few years. But part of the reason he can do that is because...
roughly between 5 and 10% of the electorate has left. These are younger, better educated, more progressive voters that no longer vote, that have moved around in Europe thanks to the single market. They can just, their freedom of movement, right?
And at the same time, often they send money home to their parents and grandparents, which then means that they don't feel the need to rebel against their incumbents. So in that sense, emigration is allowing more authoritarian figures in kind of eroding democracies to consolidate their power because basically the denominator of the voters, the total number of voters is becoming more conservative.
more right-wing by the nature of them just being older. And that's something of worry in Central America as well, right? I mean, as more and more people from Central America come to the United States, it changes the nature and the character of the democracies over there that were already on very shaky ground. There's a question we ask about change generally. It asks people, what do you think is best for our country to sort of embrace change or to stick to traditions?
And, you know, that question about as well as anything tends to divide the right from the left, right? It's, you know, it's the left embracing change and this is better for our country. People on the right more likely to say we got to kind of stick to our traditional ways of doing things, right? So,
You know, a lot of the resistance that we see on the populist right to immigration, to sort of other social issues, is overall sort of framed up by how they feel about change, right? And kind of a political movement to fight against certain changes that they've seen happening in their society.
So from our conversation, I mean, one lesson so far is that things aren't so different elsewhere compared with the United States. The economy and immigration seem to be driving forces, not just when you look at the most important challenge facing the country, according to Gallup, but also when you look at the polling that you have done abroad as well. And maybe to add to a point that you brought up early on, Richard, is that the United States is a very, very important country.
Only in the most recent survey that Gallup conducted on the most important problem facing the country did poor governance...
outrank immigration for the number two issue, number one, economy, number two, poor governance, number three, immigration, in that people are just upset with who is in control and how they're doing their jobs. One thing that we didn't get to that when you look at reporting on global democracy and all of these elections is social media.
Every time you have this conversation, you come back to, well, social media in some ways just amplifies human tendencies that have existed all along. But at the same time, it is new. And so it's worth asking, what role does it play in all of this?
Social media obviously is playing a greater and greater role in our politics. I mean, one thing I'll mention is that we've done some polling on the role of social media and democracy over the past year or two years, really, in a number of countries around the world. And the findings are kind of interesting. There's a basic question we ask about the impact of social media on democracy.
And in most countries where we ask the question, people actually say it's been a good thing for their democracy. They are not blind to all the risks. They say it's led to less civility. It's led to more division. It's made it easier for politicians to manipulate people. But they see some upsides, too. You know, at a time when people feel kind of voiceless, you can use these platforms to express your voice better.
It can raise the awareness of issues. It can inform people. It can make politicians pay attention to issues. You know, at a time when people think it's hard to get politicians to pay attention to the issues they want them to, social media can kind of force them to do that. So it's been interesting, I think, conducting that research. We've seen, you know, people are not, again, not blind to the challenges of it.
but they actually see some upsides. There are exceptions to that. And the biggest exception to that is the United States. Americans are a big outlier, much more likely than others around the world to say that social media has actually been a bad thing for democracies. People don't have the same common narrative of the news anymore. Take the one extreme example in post-war Britain, right? Everybody watched BBC. So BBC controlled the news every day, what was important, what was not important. The next day, the newspapers would have
different narratives based on their left-wing or right-wing newspapers. Then when elections came, they would endorse either Labour or Conservative or, if you go further back, maybe even Liberals.
And so almost by adding up the subscriptions of newspapers and the person they endorsed, you could predict who was going to win because voters very broadly fell into these categories. So that's why when Rupert Murdoch's The Sun switched their allegiance from Tories to Labour in 1997 and Tony Blair, this was a huge shift where you could almost predict, well, you know, they're going to follow there.
This was probably less the case in the United States, where news has always been more, quote unquote, democratized, where there wasn't one national TV station that everybody watched, like BBC. That said, there was NPR, there was all kinds of official narratives. What you've seen with social media is that people really do live in their own news bubbles, right? Where there is a kind of
rather than it being news of what happened and then different people kind of interpreting it, it's all editorial now. It's all opinion, right? I mean, the news has become one giant opinion piece where now if people watch a debate,
they're not going to watch this debate objectively and look at the merits of two candidates and then say this person or this person won, right? It's basically in the US. If you're a Republican or a Democrat, automatically, that's the person who you're going to favor. So it's not just an amplifier. I think it's just kind of changed the way people access the news, think about the news. It completely then reinforces current patterns.
The other thing I think that some of these technologies have done is that, you know, this is a less hierarchical kind of information environment and the barriers to entry are lower, right? So new representatives can emerge, new, you know, movements can emerge, Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Yellow Vest, things like that.
that weren't possible back before these platforms were around. So, you know, it allows in maybe some good ways, new kind of leaders to come onto the scene who may be more representative of the population, but it also allows bad actors to have more opportunities. Like would-be authoritarians can come onto these platforms and manipulate people with false information. So it opens things up in ways that might have positive impacts on the way people are represented, but it also creates opportunities for the sort of bad actors out there too. Yeah.
All right, let's move on and talk about some of the specific countries that have had elections or are about to have elections. But first, a break. Today's podcast is brought to you by Shopify. Ready to make the smartest choice for your business? Say hello to Shopify, the global commerce platform that makes selling a breeze.
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So far, we've been speaking broadly about dissatisfaction that has led to anti-incumbent voting. And it sounds like we're seeing anti-incumbent voting in the
regardless of which party is currently in control. And so in some countries, that has led to a right-wing government taking power. In countries like the UK, we expect a left-wing country or center-left party is on the cusp of taking power. One glaring exception is Mexico, that after 20 elections in Latin America that saw the party in power booted out,
Mexico kept the same party, elected the handpicked successor of AMLO, the then president, and by a significant margin, you know, by 20 points. What can we learn from Mexico's experience that flies in the face of pretty much every other election we've seen this year? One thing I'll mention on Mexico is we did a poll there recently, and I believe it was 63% said the economy was in good shape.
Right. So that's a pretty good number. If you're the incumbent party, I think there have been some redistributive policies that have been enacted there that are pretty popular. And the economy doesn't dictate everything about election outcomes. Right. But when people are feeling good about the economic change, you know, a few years ago, we certainly weren't seeing those kind of numbers in Mexico. Right.
That's a big part of why an incumbent party might be reelected. The example of Argentina is just the opposite, right? Very, very poor economic ratings for many years. People were willing to try something new and kind of go beyond the traditional parties in part because they're so frustrated about the economy. So I think that's certainly part of the story in Mexico.
Mexico is an economic story, which of course then flies in the face of the United States, right? Because if it's based on macro figures in the economy,
the US and the incumbent should be doing very well. Of course, what Richard mentioned is key. People feeling good about the economy and 63% thinking it's going in the right direction is a very high number. And my sense is that that would have to do with the last few years. If the US economy does very well as it has, that usually tends to benefit Mexico, that exports a huge amount of its stuff
to the United States and it's only been reinforced with the clamping down on unfair trade practices from China that has seen a lot of that kind of traditional trade from China going to the US that now go either via Mexico or being replaced by Mexico.
It's a puzzling case to me still. Some folks have made comparisons between Malay's victory in Argentina to, you know, Trump, for example, which has been a little confusing when you think about it from a policy perspective, because from a policy perspective, Malay is a libertarian and is in the process of in the short term causing a lot of economic pain to hopefully in the long term create a more stable economy, more stable currency. Yeah.
We've talked about over the past decade or so that in many cases when people are dissatisfied with the economy, they're willing to try these more populist nationalist parties on the right wing. Millais is actually pretty different when it comes to that, in that he didn't run on sort of protectionism for the economy or whatnot. How would we describe that phenomenon or explain that phenomenon?
There's definitely an element here that Millet's promise was to do something radically different than anybody who had gone on for him before, right? And so they've had neoliberal experiments. They've had, obviously, the kind of Peronist, you know, left-wing, let's use the state to promote economic growth experiments. And
They've all been dismal failures, right? So a kind of radical, I think he combines a populist style with in the end what is a libertarian economic program, right? And it differs from Trump in the sense that it's definitely not protectionist, but then a smaller economy like Argentina's can't afford it. I mean, also the way these electoral systems work, right? These sort of like winner take all, first pass the post systems in two rounds.
then tend to benefit, I think, the right, especially if the left has been in power for a long time, which is something that would worry me if you're the French left as well. I'm sure we'll get to France in a minute. But if there's a choice between left and right, and the left has just been in power, then they're going to probably err on the far end in something very, very different. Yeah, let's dive in. Let's talk about the European elections and the upcoming snap elections in the UK and France.
France. I think the broad takeaway from the European elections was that far-right parties did better. I don't know if better than expected, but better than they have done historically. Now, as a result, Macron has called for snap elections in France to...
It's been framed as a sort of challenge to French voters of do you really want the far right when it actually matters? What are we seeing there? Because we're talking about the far right doing well in European elections, while the most high profile of the elections, probably the UK election, is opposite of that. What makes Macron's gamble particularly risky is it would be one thing to follow this logic. OK, I've just gotten a beating from the far right.
It was the EU elections where French voters traditionally feel very comfortable booting out or at least sending a signal to the incumbents because they feel like it has no consequence. So Macron's gamble is, I'm going to call an election now. I'm going to call their bluff, the far right.
Turnout may well go from 50% to 70, 80% because there's so much more at stake. And if the choice is the far right versus me and broad centrist allies, I'll probably win again, just like he did in 2022 when he roughly won 42-58 against Marine Le Pen.
The danger, of course, is in this two-round system is that as Macron, the man who was going to blow away left and right from the radical center and managed to do this beautifully in 2017, has now resuscitated the right and the left. Because you have a united left. They call themselves the New Popular Front.
And then there's Marine Le Pen and other sort of far-right parties, even though they never seem to find a common ground and run together. But what could happen is that the center implodes this way. And you put it beautifully, Galen. You're saying, yeah, I mean, surely when it comes down to it, this real choice, they won't go for the far right. But they might if the alternative is the far left, right? I mean, you're already seeing this currently where French business
Now, in a panic a bit, you know, they never expected this to happen. And now that it is happening, they realize, oh my God, we have no relationship with Marine Le Pen, the Rassemblement National, the far right. And they're quickly cultivating these relationships because she could well be in power or her
you know, right-hand man, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, who looks to be in poll position right now to become prime minister. So in this system where you need to get, I mean, it's complicated because it's 12.5% in the first round you need of all registered voters. So a 50% vote, that means you need something like 25%. So in practice, it ends up being the top two parties that go to the next round. But in this case, it looks shaping up to be a choice between far left and
United Left, and the far right. And there, a lot of people, especially after centrist government that doesn't seem to have delivered the goods, may well choose the far right rather than the far left. What you have in the UK is the exact opposite, right? You've had a sort of populist experiment
Since 2016, where Brexit has dominated the Conservative Party, it's consumed the party. They've gone through multiple leaders and prime ministers, multiple finance ministers. It's clearly now acknowledged that this was a mistake to leave the European Union.
that it didn't deliver faster growth or new trade deals or less immigration for that matter, quite the opposite. And so there is this very clear understanding among the electorate that this party in government, the natural party of government, the Conservative Party has failed and they want boring. They've had excitement for eight years.
They now want a sort of credible, relatively boring manager to kind of right the ship slowly, even though they also don't want to restart this discussion and have a second referendum and open up these old wounds that have scarred British society over the last eight years.
If you look at Poland, the right-wing populace lost last year, lost power. If you look at Italy, Maloney and the right-wing populace are in power. At any given moment, you can read too much into any given election. It may depend on particular factors in that country. One thing I feel like has changed in Europe compared to a decade, decade and a half ago is that
for the most part, it seems like the right-wing populists are part of the political landscape in a way maybe they weren't, right? I mean, these parties are really solidly built into every election. You know, AFD was something that wasn't around a decade ago. Right now, it's, you know, getting a lot of support in Germany. The populist parties in Italy and other places have risen and gained power. So there's sort of, to me, a more, you know, sort of
built-in part of the political system in a way that, again, they weren't maybe a decade, decade and a half ago. All right. So final question here, and most important for our purposes, I say cheekily, what does this all mean for us here in the United States, if anything? So I teach comparative politics, right? And the kind of three archetypal, stereotypical
Ideal types of democracies are the United States, presidential, United Kingdom, parliamentary, and France, semi-presidential. And all three seem to be at, I mean, almost revolutionary moments in the sense that France may have its first far-right government since Vichy, right, since World War II. The UK...
could see the Conservative Party, by far the most successful party of government in any democracy, right, who's been in power almost most of the time, they could be decimated. They're at risk of not being the official opposition. It could be the Liberal Democrats, depending on, you know, what actually happens on July 4th.
And at the same time in the US, I think what's changed is that there's one political party, the Republican Party, that now seems to be in control of one person and is becoming the vehicle of that person to come to power and who knows, stay in power, right? The fact that
Trump's daughter-in-law is in charge of the party. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that you just haven't seen in the United States, right? And what does it mean, these kind of anti-incumbent movements, both in France and the UK, and you see all over the world? First of all, it's no good news for Joe Biden, right? I mean, he is in a way running like he is ahead in the polls, and he clearly isn't.
And also, interestingly enough, the Democratic Party has a Biden problem. I mean, many of the senators in swing states that are running as Democrats are well ahead of their Republican opponents, while at the same time, Donald Trump in those same polls is ahead of Joe Biden. But what makes this election, I think, in the U.S. particularly hard to predict
It seems to come down or fall down on a few tens of thousands of voters in six swing states that are younger, male, Latino and black that may favor Donald Trump right now, but may not end up voting.
Right. So this is then going to become this sort of huge get out the vote action from from both sides. But it's not clear to me that the Republican Party has experience getting those kinds of voters to actually go and vote that are traditionally maybe more democratic.
You can sense the anti-incumbent mode here. But given the nature of the system that you have to pick one or the other, this also means a lot of people may not vote at all because in many ways it's the election nobody wanted. You have these two very old candidates. One's going to be 82. The other just turned 78.
And very few people want either to be president in 2025. Certainly, we see a pretty grim public mood in the United States right now. You know, a lot of unhappiness with the choices available in this election. You know, across national markets,
It's interesting how much the U.S. stands out pretty often. The U.S. stands out as being among the most negative countries in terms of just overall assessments of how things are working, in terms of dissatisfaction with democracy, in terms of thinking political leaders don't listen to average citizens, a variety of other questions.
And we often stand out as the most divided. So on just lots of different issues, social issues, others, you know, we are more divided along ideological and partisan lines than other countries around the world. And, you know, there are other countries that are divided, too, but the U.S. often stands out as the most divided. You know, we all know that polarization has increased dramatically in the U.S. in recent years. And it shows up, you know, it
And when we look at the U.S. versus the rest of the world. So, you know, moving forward, I think that is there any insight to those trends, right, in terms of this, the grim political mood, the large divisions we see in the U.S.? So that's something we want to look and see how it plays out over the course of the election and then after the election. Right. Are there any signs that the kind of division and negativity that we've seen in the U.S. could turn around?
The one thing I find striking and very un-American is pessimism, right? I mean, I moved to the United States in 2002. And yes, there was George W. Bush. And yes, a lot of liberal progressives were going to move to Canada in 2004 if he was going to get reelected. The polarization has been there. And that's something that started, I think, in the late 80s, early 1990s. But it's definitely gotten way worse than it was 20 years ago.
But pessimism about the future is such an anti-American sentiment. There's a kind of mood that's turned where people are like, yes, we're past our peak, in a sense. And that for a European immigrant in the United States is very unusual, right? Because it was what still appeals.
many people to come here. And it's almost French in a sense. I mean, the French were always pessimistic. Ooh, savage, savage. We've had our best days well behind us and so on. And so that I think is probably one of the more interesting findings by Pew that Richard mentioned.
Always good to get a perspective of the rest of the world and also a perspective of ourselves based on information from the rest of the world. Thank you so much for joining me today, Matthias and Richard. Thank you. Thanks for having us.
My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Shortavian, and our intern is Jayla Everett. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcast at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or a review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon. ♪