The Supply-side Determinants of Populism: A Conjoint Experiment in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Iceland

What characteristics in politicians are attractive to populist voters and what constitutes a typical populist politician in the eyes of Western European citizens? These questions have been pertinent for quite some time, but is increasingly relevant to answer at a time where several European democracies, such as the Netherlands and France, are on the brink of supporting far-right populist politicians that threaten to plunge the European Union into disarray. Therefore, it is important to understand how people perceive and evaluate populist strategies and attributes. We conduct a conjoint experiment asking a large probability sample of French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, and Icelandic citizens to evaluate profiles of politicians that randomly varies between eleven attributes. These attributes are based on what previous research have identified as “typical” for far right populist politicians and parties. We ask 1) which candidate people view as most likely to represent the concerns of ordinary people, and 2) which candidate people, among far right populist voters, would support. As the study will be fielded during the spring 2017, we have yet to reveal the results. However, we expect that people’s support for far-right politicians are shaped by the politician’s experience in political office, immigration view, and EU membership view.