You do know that populism along with nattivist, anti-trade agreement, isolationist, anti-immigrant policies can be popular on both the left as well as the right? As discussed below, in Europe, some leftist political parties have ridden populist movements to power while also scapegoating trade and immigration.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/bernie-sanders-and-donald-trump-ride-the-populist-wave

Let’s start with the qualifiers. New Hampshire is a small state tucked away in the northeast corner of the country, with a population that is, in many ways, unrepresentative of the United States as a whole. Compared to the rest of the country, it is whiter, quirkier, and more willing to turn its back on establishment candidates of both parties. Since 1988, no non-incumbent Democrat or Republican who has won a New Hampshire primary has gone on to win the Presidency.

All of that said, in the grand sweep of political history, what happened last night was remarkable. In the first primaries of the 2016 campaign, two candidates who are only barely members of their respective parties won the Democratic and Republican contests. And they didn’t just win. They* *trounced their opponents.

In the Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders, who once described himself as an independent socialist and now uses the term “democratic socialist,” won about sixty per cent of the vote. He defeated Hillary Clinton, who was long widely regarded as a shoo-in for the nomination, by more than twenty-one percentage points. In the Republican primary, Donald Trump, who calls himself a Republican but whose very name sends many longtime G.O.P. politicians and supporters into fits, got more than thirty-five per cent of the vote and defeated the second-place finisher, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, by more than nineteen percentage points.

On the basis of recent opinion polls, which showed Sanders and Trump well ahead, these results weren’t entirely unexpected. But it is worth stepping back a bit. Nine months ago, when Sanders launched his campaign in New Hampshire, most political observers dismissed him as a fringe candidate. In June, when Trump entered the Republican race, most analysts, myself included, didn’t think he would go the distance. The pundits now stand embarrassed. The two New Yorkers—Sanders is from Brooklyn; Trump is from Queens—have campaigned as insurgents, each with a clear message. They rode to last night’s victories on a populist wave, the limits of which will determine the outcome of the primaries, and, quite possibly, the general election.