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European countries enjoy a universal franchise, but sadly a universal franchise doesn’t mean equal access or confidence. According to the European Social Survey, the median level of confidence in participating in politics among the poorest 10% of the population is 2.6 out of 10. The median level of confidence participating in politics among the richest 10% is 5.7 out of 10:

What happens when we divide the results by education, which of course has an important influence on political confidence? Even at set levels of education (12 years full time education, 15 years full-time education, 18 years full time education), higher income still tends to increase confidence, although the relationship becomes weaker at the highest levels of education.

Given that the poor and those who perceive themselves as under financial pressure are more likely to support redistribution, this may go some way towards explaining why supporters of redistribution are generally less confident in participating in politics than their opponents are:

So we have evidence for a vicious cycle- the poor are robbed of the confidence to participate in politics, which in turn reduces their influence over politics, which in turn increases their poverty, decreasing their confidence, and so on.

But what does political confidence mean in practice?

The measure we looked at above is a subjective measure of confidence participating in politics. Let’s round out the discussion by considering some objective measures of participation against income.

The rich are far less likely to abstain from voting:

The rich are far more likely to sign petitions:

The rich are even slightly more likely to participate in protests.

HOWEVER! I want to add a caveat to this one, which is that among the poor who do engage in political action, protests are relatively popular compared to other forms of political action. Thus, please don’t use this as evidence that protesting is ‘privileged’ as I have seen some do. Again- compared to other forms of political activity, those in lower income deciles seem to be relatively keen on protesting, even though their absolute level of participation in protesting is lower.

Thus the rich don’t just feel more confident about political action- they do more of it to, further increasing their political power.