The Road to Nowhere: Being Rooted in a Region Does Little to Predict Support for Populist Parties or Opposition to Migration and Social Change.

Abstract

In his influential book The road to somewhere David Goodhart claims that a split between a majority of people who are rooted in particular places or groups (the "Somewheres") and a minority of people who are or can be at home anywhere in the world (the "Anywheres") is at the heart of many contemporary political conflicts. According to him, the Anywheres dominate public discourse and political decisions, while the preferences of the Somewheres are neglected. Goodhart's arguments have been widely cited but rarely systematically tested. We conduct such a test for the following three central claims of his book: Somewheres oppose migration and social change and almost all supporters of populist parties are Somewheres. We extend the focus beyond the UK with an analysis in Germany and Switzerland, two countries where subnational identities are relatively pronounced. We contribute methodologically by identifying Somewheres and Anywheres according to their perceptions of regional identity collected via web probing. Respondents are classified based on their responses to an open-ended question in an online survey asking why they feel close-or not close-to their region of residence. Contrary to Goodhart's claims, we find no differences between Somewheres and other respondents in attitudes towards social change and migration. And certainly not all supporters of populist parties are Somewheres. New and unconventional explanations for the causes of populist revolt in established democracies are timely, but without rigorous empirical tests in different settings they risk leading to false conclusions.