Disengaged and Uninformed? Political Knowledge and Interest Among Voters with Strong Populist Attitudes

In their discourse, populist parties place faith in the wisdom of the ‘ordinary people’, and express distrust of self-serving and unresponsive elites. Their supporters have been shown to share these views; they are, in other words, characterised by above-average populist attitudes (e.g. Akkerman et al 2014). Due to its stress on the virtues of the ordinary people and its anti-elitism, which targets the political establishment but also its supposed allies in journalistic and academic circles, populism arguably has an innate anti-intellectual streak. Populist inclinations, furthermore, are often associated with lower levels of political interest and efficacy (e.g. Webb 2013). Recent research suggests, however, that populist party support may actually be a purposeful action by politically invested and interested voters (Van Hauwaert and van Kessel 2017). Populist attitudes are more complex than basic feelings of discontent, and arguably signify well-established and strong ideas about the functioning of representative democracy. Since studies have shown that strong political views are positively correlated with political interest (Zaller 1992), this leads us to question the assumption that people with strong populist attitudes tend to be politically apathetic or ignorant. In our study we use survey data from nine European countries provided by the LIVEWHAT project in order to assess to what extent individuals with populist attitudes differ from other voters in terms of their political knowledge and interest. By doing this, we address the relationship between populist attitudes and key psychological variables related to political cognition and dispositions.