Populists do not vote ideologically but hedge political volatility through nationalist myths

Evidence

By contrast, I suggest that over the course of the last decade the demos has enthusiastically embraced finance’s speculative imagination and, on some occasions, has deployed it against the markets’ (formerly) unchallenged guarantors—though rarely against finance itself. What makes this particular breed of finance-driven neopopulism especially powerful is its ability to hedge uncertainty and political volatility, without access to the material and political resources that previously would have been essential for attaining a sense of security (in the form of employment, income, or other forms of fulfillment). This is made possible thanks to a type of insurance that is no longer expected or sought in government but is couched instead in collective myths afforded by a reignited nationalism. In that sense, the renewed coalition of finance and polity is in fact not a paradox at all. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 270

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the core content of ‘homo speculans’ applied to politics — voting as hedging rather than preference-expression.
• QUESTION: Is this insurance-by-myth claim testable against actual voter psychology data, or is it asserted from the finance metaphor?
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated thesis about financialized populism and to Hirschman’s exit-voice-loyalty frame and to post-truth voting literature. — connects to: Right-wing populism works by telling voters the problem is outsiders, not themselves — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2040