No Country for Populists? The Mismatch Between the Populist Media Environment and the Weak Electoral Appeal of Populist Parties and Candidates in Portugal

One of the most interesting patterns in today's Portugal is the absence of relevant populist political parties (Salgado and Zúquete 2017), which differentiates this third-wave crisis-struck peripheral democracy from most European nations (Mudde 2017). The Portuguese party system was much more resilient that than of other Southern European countries facing economic turmoil from 2008 onwards; unlike Spain, Italy or Greece, no anti-system populists parties emerged, and the balance of power between the traditional parties stayed virtually similar to that preceding the bailout (Santana-Pereira 2016). This constitutes an interesting paradox, given that the context, both in terms of political culture (distrust and disenchantment), economic situation (severe crisis) and media environment (strongly populist, if one applies Mazzoleni's definition of media populism) would be a fertile ground for the advent of populism. In this article, I examine in detail this specific context in comparative perspective, analyse the feeble and unsuccessful populist attempts (Marinho e Pinto in the 2014 European and 2015 legislative elections; Vitorino Silva, and, to a lesser extent, Paulo de Morais and Jorge Sequeira in the 2016 presidential election), and the media coverage they received. By doing so, I will make the case for an understanding of Portugal's media environment as populist in style and issues but unsympathetic to populist politicians.