There’s a popular line doing the rounds at the moment, most recently put by Kos Samaras from RedBridge Group, in a column published in The New Daily that voters across Western democracies are turning away from “managers” and towards “fighters.”
It’s a compelling argument. And to be fair, it captures something real.
When people feel ignored, under pressure, or let down by institutions, they do become more receptive to leaders who are willing to draw lines, name opponents, and prosecute a cause. You can see that energy on both sides of politics. It’s sharper, louder, and far more visible than the quieter business of consensus-building.
But I think that framing misses something important.
What’s actually changed is the environment. Social media rewards outrage. News cycles amplify conflict. Political incentives increasingly favour those who can cut through with force rather than those who can quietly deliver. In that kind of ecosystem, “fighters” don’t just exist, they dominate attention. And attention can easily be mistaken for preference.
You can see this play out in real time on social media every day.
Post something measured, fact-based, and grounded in evidence, even on issues people claim to care deeply about, and the response is often muted. Engagement drops off. The conversation is thinner, slower, and far less visible. It doesn’t travel.
Now post something provocative, emotionally charged, or outright misleading, and the opposite happens. It spreads quickly. It draws reactions, arguments, pile-ons. It creates momentum. Outrage, whether justified or not, has a velocity that facts alone rarely match.
This is where the argument needs more context.
Yes, there is a visible shift towards more combative political styles. Yes, leaders who “fight” and “name enemies” are cutting through more effectively. But part of that shift is being manufactured and amplified by the environment itself.
Algorithms don’t measure considered judgment, they measure engagement. And engagement is disproportionately driven by conflict, identity, and emotion. The more divisive the content, the more it is surfaced, shared, and reinforced. Over time, that creates a feedback loop where the loudest voices appear to represent the dominant view.
Political actors respond rationally to that incentive structure. Media organisations do too. And gradually, the public conversation becomes skewed toward confrontation, not necessarily because it reflects a deep, settled voter preference, but because it performs better in the channels that now shape perception.
That distinction matters.
Because when we look at this through that lens, the idea that voters are “abandoning” consensus politics starts to look less like a clear shift in values and more like a distortion of what we’re able to see and measure.
There is still a large, quieter cohort of voters who value competence, evidence, and the ability to build consensus, but their preferences don’t generate the same immediate reaction, so they don’t get the same visibility. They are present, but underrepresented in the noise.
So while Samaras is right to point out the rise of more combative political behaviour, it’s worth asking how much of that is genuine demand, and how much of it is a system that amplifies conflict and mistakes attention for endorsement.
Because if we confuse the two, we risk overcorrecting, rewarding the loudest voices while overlooking the broader, more durable expectations voters still have when it comes to governing.
And that’s where the real tension sits, between what cuts through, and what actually works.
