The cultural division that explains political shocks from Brexit to Le Pen

On May 7, France will choose its next president.

In the first round of voting on April 23, voters rejected candidates from the country’s established parties, lifting former investment banker Emmanuel Macron and nationalist Marine Le Pen to the runoff. The vote capped a swift rise for Le Pen’s National Front party, whose anti-immigrant views had long interfered with its general success. The fringe seems to have become the mainstream. A political radical has become a possible president.

Yet Le Pen’s popularity is hardly an outlier. Events like Brexit, Trump’s election, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s