Why do people vote against their economic interests? Take a look at some threads here.

[RZM]

27. In my personal experience, many people who say these types of things are far from 'elite'

In fact, I suspect that might be part of the reason they do it. Much broad-brush bashing is really about wanting to feel superior to others. If you convince yourself that people who disagree with you are idiots and racists, you can sleep well knowing that you are superior to them.

I used to live in a college town in SE Ohio, which is pretty much Appalachia. Most of the other graduate students I knew were from other parts of the country and had never lived anywhere near Appalachia. I was quite surprised to see how many of them looked at the locals almost as a separate species. They never missed an opportunity to degrade them and call them stupid, inbred, morons (never to their faces, of course). Some of the loudest voices were not only liberals (most of the people I knew were liberals), but actually people from quite modest backgrounds . . . a few had grown up rather poor themselves. I got the sense that they were ashamed of their own backgrounds and liked to bash the local population because they were one of the few groups of people they could actually feel superior to.

This wasn't even about politics either. It was just cultural and economic bias. They resented the locals because of the way they looked and talked. Bigotry comes in many forms, I guess.