Or do we need to rethink our democratic theories? Maybe the drivers of voter anger and disillusionment today aren’t primarily economic. Maybe they’re symbolic and driven by opportunistic elites.

Is this just another case of *U.S. exceptionalism*? Or part of a broader global trend in how democracies are threatened from within even in the absence of major crises?

Many voters are uninformed about concepts such as authoritarianism and don't tend to prioritize them in their voting decisions. Inflation is the single biggest economic factor affecting voting behavior & millions of voters had never experienced high inflation before.

I think that’s right to some extent but also isn’t there a decline in economic voting in recent elections?

I wonder if the decline in economic vote was due to the lack of inflation (at least in the US) for over a decade. You could say the recession/2008 was the last big case of economic voting before 2024.

The internal threat has been a reality in Canada with the ‘former’ opposition leader pushing ‘Canada is broken’, ‘Trudeau is bad’ for years and with like-minded right wingers eroded respect. The trucker’s convoy was an example of the so-called uprising. Thankfully we voted against that 💩.

Voters' economic concerns are different to what they once were. My guess is pocketbook economic voting is much more important in recent elections than historically - cost of living now trumps GDP. Cultural issues are important, at least at the margins, but can be decisive in close elections.