Abstract
Much of the contemporary literature on populism focuses on its status as a thin ideology comprising three key components: people-centrism, anti-elitism, and anti-pluralism. Populist politicians pair this thin ideology with extreme positions on policy issues such as immigration or taxation (referred to as host or thick ideologies). A recent study using German samples leveraged conjoint experiments to disentangle the effects of these appeals on vote choice. The results not only showed that extreme host-ideological positions mattered more than so-called thin populist appeals, but also that effects of populist appeals were nearly identical among populist and non-populist voters. Our replication in the US context reaffirms both the importance of host-ideological positions and the lack of heterogeneous effects by voters'thin populist attitudes. Furthermore, by uncovering some divergence from the German case (e.g. anti-elite appeals trumping people-centric appeals), we highlight the need to experimentally examine the effects of populism's constituent components across contexts.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 438-447 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Experimental Political Science |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 16 2023 |
Keywords
- campaign appeals
- conjoint experiment
- Populism
- populist attitudes
- populist voting
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science