Dimensions of Populism; New Measures and New Data

There is growing consensus that ‘Anti-elitism’, ‘people-centeredness’, and ‘Manicheanism’ are distinct dimensions of populism’s ‘thin ideology’. Research on the demand-side has shown that voting for populist parties can be predicted well by measuring ‘populist attitudes’. Captured by elaborate survey questions and recent data, these are divided into the different dimensions. Yet, we still lack information on these dimensions for earlier time periods and several countries, which is crucial for explaining how populist parties emerge and why they appeal to voters. The proposed paper examines the fragmented nature of existing data collections by comparing innovative workarounds and proxy measures so as to assess their predictive quality when analysing voting for populist parties. It presents an overview of existing measures and makes a case (a) for which measure (e.g., trust in political parties, left-right self-assessment, satisfaction with democracy, political interest) may serve as valid proxies for populist attitudes and (b) under which contextual and individual conditions such substitutes are acceptable. Crucially, this work examines the effect of external contexts and voter traits on the accuracy of the respective measures when analysing vote choice for populist parties, especially in comparison with the new measures of populist attitudes? Finally, the paper explores the limits of explaining populist vote choice based on attitudes and their proxy measures? This will substantially contribute to our understanding of populist voting in various contexts and different stages of populist party development.