You see the same pattern over much of the world. In three consecutive presidential elections in the United States. In the latest polls in Britain, where the 2016 Brexit referendum was the first notable outbreak. In France‘s most recent national election and in Germany’s. In Canada’s election last month. And maybe in Poland and South Korea last weekend.

The pattern can be summarized in a simple formula. M+M versus H. Or, increasingly and to the discomfort of established politicians and press personnel, M+(1-x)M<H+xM.

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The first M stands for Metropole, the dominant governmental, media, and cultural center of each country. London and Paris in Britain and France, obviously, with 16% to 20% of the nation’s population and practically all its elites. In the U.S., metro New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In Canada, Toronto and Anglophone Montreal. In South Korea, Seoul. 

The second M stands for Minorities, racial and ethnic. In Britain, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, Muslims in industrial cities. In the U.S., the various peoples, bracketed by the Census Bureau ukase, as blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. Francophone Canadians. Peoples whose experiences have set them apart as alien and potentially adversary to the dominant society.

I first discerned the M+M vs. H patterns in June and November 2016. As I wrote in 2019, in the Brexit referendum, 60% or more of voters in metro London and Scotland voted against leaving the European Union, but Brexit won because 57% in England outside London voted for it. 

Similarly, in the U.S, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump 65% to 30% in the NY/DC/LA/SF Metropole, which is 15% of the nation,  but Trump won 49% to 45% in the Heartland in between. Key electoral votes came from 2012 Obama voters switching to Trump in the non-major metropolitan half of the Midwest.

The Heartland doesn’t always lose. Joe Biden’s November 2020 victory over Donald Trump is one example of that. The ouster of pro-Brexit Prime Minister Boris Johnson in summer 2022, and the Labour party victory in the July 2024 general election, is another. 

2022 saw incumbent French President Emanuel Macron, who in the first round ran behind a leftist in the Metropole and just 4 points ahead of the populist anti-mass-immigration Marine Le Pen in the Heartland, Macron won the runoff but by only half the margin of four years before. 

The elites have fought back. Johnson was ousted following an ethics complaint, and a French court barred Le Pen from running for five years on a flimsy rationale. European Union elites removed the candidate who led the first ballot in Romania from the runoff and have threatened to bar Germany’s AfD, the second-place finisher in the February election, from future contests.

You can see the similarities with the lawfare attacks on Trump and the kangaroo court prosecution by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.  

Elites justify these moves by invoking the tragic history of the first half of the twentieth century. But objecting to having economic policies set by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels is not undemocratic. And barring or limiting the uncontrolled influx of often culturally hostile immigrants is not the moral equivalent of murdering six million Jews. 

Preventing voters from exercising their free choice is a funny way of “saving democracy.” And not a very effective way. Le Pen’s deputy Jordan Bardella is running well in polls, and Labour in Britain polls way behind Nigel Farage’s Reform party by 362 to 136 seats at present, with nearly 40% of the party’s seats in metro London. 

And Donald Trump’s 2024 victory seems to have produced a realignment in his direction. The Metropole-Minorities alliance is fading, as Hispanics, Asians, and, to a lesser extent, blacks have trended Republican. Kamala Harris’s 61-36 margin in the NY/DC/LA/SF Metropole is notably less than Hillary Clinton’s 65-30, while in the Heartland beyond, Trump increased his 49-45 plurality in 2016 to a 52-46 majority in 2024. 

A brilliant New York Times graphic shows that Trump has gained percentages in each of the last three elections in 1,433 counties with 42 million people, while his Democratic opponents have gained percentages three times in only 57 counties with 8 million people. As Jewish Insider’s Josh Kraushaar noted on X: “For years, the belief was Democrats have had demographic destiny on our side. Now, the inverse is true.”

One corollary of this largely unpredicted movement of Minorities away from Metropole attitudes and toward the Heartland is that the young, for Minorities tend to be younger than average, are moving that way too. 

Perhaps that helps account for the victory of Karl Nawrocki, who was trailing in pre-election polling and even in the exit poll in Poland. There’s polling evidence that young voters switched from the center Left in 2020 to the Right this time. Nawrocki may have been helped, or at least wasn’t hurt, by his May 1 Oval Office visit or by elite efforts to disqualify populist candidates in Romania and Germany. 

POLAND ALIGNS WITH THE U.S. OVER EUROPE AS TRUMP ALLY NAWROCKI BECOMES PRESIDENT

At the same time, the map of last weekend’s Polish election results looks almost identical to those from 2005 to 2020. And they’re correlated with historic patterns. The center-right party wins areas within the pre-1914 tsarist Russia empire, minus the large cities of Warsaw and Lodz. The center Left wins those areas within pre-1914 Germany. The strongest Right areas are in southeast Poland, along the Ukrainian border, which were in pre-1914 Austria, the only one of those multi-ethnic empires with a Catholic monarch.

All of which is to say that the Metropole plus Minority versus Heartland pattern does not apply everywhere, and history still has its claims on many voters. But we’re watching some new electoral history being made, with no clear end in sight.