In this article, we revisit the main claims of Part Four of Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology and especially the changing support coalitions for parties of the left. Piketty's core argument in this part of the book is that the left now represents the highly educated and that, as a result, the redistributive preferences of the working class do not find representation in today's party systems. We address these claims building on existing political science research that has investigated the transformation of politics in advanced capitalist societies. We argue, first, that the educational divide cannot be adequately analyzed by looking at a left and a right bloc, but crucially needs to pay attention to the rise of green/left‐libertarian and radical right parties. Second, we contend that the new middle classes that support parties of the left are largely in favor of economic redistribution. Analyzing data from the European Social Survey in 11 West European countries from 2002 to 2018, we show that the effect of education on voting left or right is indeed largely driven by green/left‐libertarian and radical right parties, while there is little empirical evidence that social democratic parties represent the educational elite. We also find that redistributive preferences remain at the heart of voting behavior and that, especially for educated voters, these preferences determine whether someone votes for a party of the left rather than the right.

中文翻译：

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婆罗门左与商人右？西欧的教育、阶级、多党竞争和再分配

在本文中，我们重新审视了托马斯·皮凯蒂的资本与意识形态第四部分的主要主张尤其是左翼政党不断变化的支持联盟。皮凯蒂在本书这一部分的核心论点是，左派现在代表了受过高等教育的人，因此，工人阶级的再分配偏好在当今的政党制度中找不到代表。我们在现有政治科学研究的基础上处理这些主张，这些研究调查了发达资本主义社会的政治转型。我们认为，首先，不能通过左翼和右翼集团来充分分析教育鸿沟，但至关重要的是需要关注绿色/左翼自由主义和激进右翼政党的兴起。其次，我们认为支持左翼政党的新中产阶级在很大程度上支持经济再分配。分析 2002 年至 2018 年 11 个西欧国家的欧洲社会调查数据，我们表明教育对左翼或右翼投票的影响确实主要由绿色/左翼自由主义者和激进右翼政党驱动，而几乎没有经验证据社会民主党代表教育精英。我们还发现，再分配偏好仍然是投票行为的核心，尤其是对于受过教育的选民，这些偏好决定了某人是否投票支持左翼政党而不是右翼政党。