Who Votes for the Right? Age, Education, Income and the Hidden Geography of Political Ignorance

Who really votes for the right?

The stereotype is simple: old, poor and poorly educated.

The data are not.

🇺🇸 USA: 60% of Trump voters were 50+, while 67% had no four-year college degree. But younger men moved sharply toward Trump in 2024. (Pew Research Center)

🇦🇷 Argentina: Milei’s coalition is particularly strong among young voters. Recent academic research finds education has no significant independent effect on support for La Libertad Avanza. (DOI)

🇩🇪 Germany: AfD’s strongest age group in 2025 was 35–44, not the elderly. Support reached 29% among voters with primary education but only 13% among those with higher education. (Wikipedia)

🇮🇹 Italy: FdI is particularly strong among adults and voters with lower educational attainment, but its core is largely middle class—not simply poor or uneducated. (cise)

🇫🇷 France: RN support is strongly correlated with education: 43% among voters below the French baccalauréat versus 15% among Bac+5+. But RN is also expanding rapidly among young voters. (Ipsos)

The bigger issue is functional literacy.

The OECD finds low literacy proficiency at Level 1 or below among roughly 35% of adults in Italy, 28% in France, 22% in Germany and 28% in the US. (OECD Education GPS)

A degree is not the same as the ability to understand complex information.

The real political divide may increasingly be:

complexity vs simplification.
evidence vs emotion.
critical thinking vs manipulation.

#Politics #RightWing #Trump #Milei #AfD #Meloni #RN #Education #Literacy #FunctionalLiteracy #PoliticalScience #Democracy #Populism #Elections #PoliticalAnalysis #USA #Argentina #Germany #Italy #France #RobertoBalbino