Pandemic politics and the populist voter

This paper sets to understand how (if) populist voters have reacted to the Covid19 crisis. Have populist voters reacted differently than others to the crisis? Have populist attitudes been affected by the pandemic? This paper examines two major attitudinal aspects. First, it looks at the effects of the pandemic on political trust and on voters' evaluation of health and economic measures. Second, it examines populist voters' attitudes to the crisis, notably in terms of compliance to health regulations. This paper relies on an original cross-country panel survey (4 waves in 11 OECD democracies). This paper finds that populist voters distinguish themselves with lower levels of trust, and tend (in some contexts) to be less compliant to health restrictions than others.