Echoes of Populism: The Stickiness of Populist Messages

Despite a plethora of studies investigating the rise of populist parties and candidates, discussion regarding the precise nature of populism remains. Specifically, extant research implicitly assumes that a specific aspect of populist rhetoric – i.e., popular/elite antagonism – explains the increase in populist party support, yet rarely empirically assert this. Existing research has not examined which aspects of the populist rhetoric ‘stick’ more amongst the public, and are most likely to explain the electoral effects of populist messages. This paper presents evidence from three large-scale online survey experiments investigating whether populist messages affect the accessibility of blame attributions, populist parties, and issue information amongst the public. Our findings show that exposure to populist rhetoric indeed sticks: it increases the accessibility of blame attributions, and decreases the accessibility of issue information.