How Populist Are the Voters of Populist Parties? Evidence from Germany

Many European countries have seen a surge of electoral support for new challenger parties. The ideological positions of these parties range from the extreme left (Syriza in Greece or Podemos in Spain) to the far right (the Front National in France or the Freedom Party in the Netherlands), and they also encompass a few more centrist parties such as the Five Star Movement in Italy. Beyond these ideological differences, however, all of these new parties criticize the political mainstream for forming an elite cartel that has ceased to respond to the will of the people. This populist political agitation, which often comes with anti-pluralist connotations since the ‘will of the people’ is usually construed as being homogenous and fixed, has provoked a plethora of contributions by scholars and journalists, all of which paint a bleak picture of ‘the populist threat’ to democracy, economic stability, the European Union and so on. But how important is populism in explaining the growing electoral appeal of populist parties? How populist are the voters of populist parties? Answers to these questions promise important insights into the causes and consequences of the rise of parties that are commonly labelled populist. Electoral studies and public opinion research have only recently begun to measure populist political attitudes among voters. Therefore, only little is known about the role of populism as a driver of support for populist challenger parties. This paper seeks to contribute some insights in order to fill this gap. Based on data collected by the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), it analyzes the parameters underlying the vote for the most visible (right-wing) populist party in the German party system: the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The GLES data include a battery of questions tapping into populism, which can be used to build an index measuring populist political attitudes. The data also provides a wide range of items measuring other potential drivers of support for (right-wing) populist parties: (objective and perceived) socio-economic deprivation, attitudes towards immigration or the EU, political alienation etc. Preliminary results suggest that populism is a relatively widespread phenomenon among German respondents. However, it is not the major driving force behind the AfD vote. Populists also voted for mainstream parties or abstained from voting. AfD support was partly driven by populist attitudes, but issue voting with regard to immigration and the EU had a stronger impact. Given the anti-pluralist undertones of populism, these findings are, in principle, good news for liberal democracy. However, they also suggest that the AfD could gain significantly more votes if the party manages to politicize anti-elite sentiments to such an extent that populists who so far voted for mainstream parties decide to switch to the AfD. In the absence of such a scenario, however, it seems that the rise of the AfD is fuelled more by discontent with the course of specific government policies than by a more fundamental dissatisfaction with representative democracy.