Why are happy people voting for angry parties? - The satisfaction paradox

2017 study ... showed that voters in Britain highly satisfied with their lives were 1.6% more likely to support the party in power... a 10% rise in family income was associated with a mere 0.18% increase ... happiness seems more important to the outcome of elections than money... in 15 European elections ... Life satisfaction... twice as important in explaining how incumbents did as the unemployment rate and about 30% more important than gdp growth....
In almost every European country, parties angry with the status quo have increased their share of the vote... Voters seem miserable and want change.... look at indicators of happiness you find exactly the opposite message.... Happy voters must be backing insurgents and populists...
voters are indeed slaves to emotional whim, not people making rational judgments... The death of a spouse... reduced voting for an incumbent by 10%... in Switzerland ... rain on voting day reduced support for changing the status quo...
populists may do well in countries with lots of happy people... because such countries tend to be richer, and so economic concerns can take second place to social and cultural matters ... would explain why support for extremists increased as economies recovered from the 2008-09 financial crisis... the high point of membership of the Ku Klux Klan was the gilded 1920s and McCarthyism blossomed in the prosperous 1950s... people who thought they were being left behind were less willing to vote for the radical right when the economy was weak (support for the radical left was stronger)... when the economy recovered, support for the far right rose....One last factor... populists are using social media more adeptly than mainstream parties