Republican primary voters said what they were looking most for in a candidate was somebody who “tells it like it is.” Donald Trump earned two-thirds of their votes. Half of GOP voters said they wanted to back an outsider, and one-third said they were looking for a candidate who would change the political system. Those voters swarmed to Trump.

A third of Democratic voters valued honesty, more than said they wanted a candidate with experience, one who cares about people like them, or who preferred someone who could win the general election. Ninety-one percent of voters looking for political integrity chose Sanders over Hillary Clinton, an icon of the Democratic establishment.

Despite their many differences, populist voters backing both Trump and Sanders want some of the same things: America pulling back from rest of the world to focus on domestic concerns; reducing special deals for the rich; reversing violations of the public’s privacy by the government and big business; fighting corporate welfare; and curbing big banks and other financial institutions.

Both Trump and Sanders are disrupting the way political campaigns are run. Sanders is raising millions of dollars in small donations, rejecting the Big Money and Dark Money that finance Washington. Trump has spent relatively little on television ads, withholding money from the consultant class while his message courses through social media and the ratings- and click-obsessed media.

In both Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump abandoned the time-honored practice of sucking up to local reporters and the political elite. He opted to nationalize the campaign, jetting home most nights.

Win or lose, their campaigns suggest that politics and government are finally starting to experience the disruption experienced by almost every other social institution, transforming how people work, shop, play, and even raise their kids in the post-Internet era.

Change is scary for most people, and there’s a lot of it right now: decades of economic downturn and transition; the greatest technological surge since the industrial era; a demographic makeover that will soon render white Americans a minority; and 15 years of war against a metastasizing enemy. Through it all, American leaders and institutions are failing to adapt.

And so voters are asking, “Which side of the barricade are you on?” As Doug Sosnik, a Democratic strategist who co-authored a book with me about leadership, asked in 2013: “Is it the side of the out-of-touch political class that clings to the status quo by protecting those at the top and their own political agendas, or is it the side that is fighting for the kind of change that will make the government work for the people—all the people?”

Trump and Sanders positioned themselves on the side of the people, and won New Hampshire.