As a liberal I have an inherit bias, but this is part of the equation from what I can tell. People who are trying to hide some deep shame are probably more drawn to the puritanism of the right. Its called reaction formation, when something makes you feel uncomfortable so you try to be the exact opposite. Its why so many anti-gay preachers and republicans turn out to secretly be gay.
But also, brain scans show conservatives feel less empathy.
It would be interesting to see if cluster B personality disorders are distributed politically. I would ‘guess’ that cluster B personality disorders like narcissistic personality disorder or anti-social personality disorder are more common on the right, but borderline personality disorder is probably more common on the left.
Looking into it, people with dark tetrad personality traits (sociopathy, narcissism, machivellianism and sadism) are somewhat more right leaning in a study in Austria. But the difference isn’t huge. No idea about BPD
The present study showed that there is a positive association between all dimensions of the Dark Tetrad and a political right-wing attitude. Moreover, Machiavellianism turned out to be the most important predictor of the dark side of human personality for political orientation. Machiavellianism is associated with misanthropy, anti-social tendencies, cold-heartedness, and immoral beliefs (Jones and Paulhus, 2011). Perhaps because the Freedom Party of Austria strongly proposes anti-immigration and anti-Islam issues, voters scoring high on Machiavellianism are particularly inclined to vote for the party’s candidate.
In contrast, only narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. A possible explanation for the association between narcissism and political extremism is due to the narcissistic tendency of focusing on one’s own interests whereas the needs of others are neglected (e.g., Campbell et al., 2002). The association between psychopathy and political extremism could be explained by psychopathic tendencies to have little empathy towards other people, being sociopathic, impulsive, and not being able to suppress behavioral tendencies that are not appreciated by society (e.g., Soderstrom, 2003).
Furthermore, Hofer voters had higher scores in narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism than did Van der Bellen voters. Although Van der Bellen was considered to be left-wing orientated, he was also considered to be far more politically moderate than Hofer. Thus, in comparison to each other, Norbert Hofer was considered to be the more “politically extreme” candidate. In fact, during the presidential election, Van der Bellen was not only endorsed by the Green party, but also by leaders of the center-left Social Democratic and center-right Austrian People’s parties.
Overall, we believe it is fair to say that there was a consistent relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism. Please keep in mind, however, that the correlation coefficients were either small or small to medium in its magnitude. Hence, the relationships between dark personality and political orientation and extremism appear to be relatively small in terms of their effect size.
This.