Do populist voters have anything in common at all? An analysis of voters’ opinions over time

Despite the diffuse scholarly attention for the populist phenomenon, we still know little about the existence (or lack) of common motivations of populist parties’ voters across ideologies (Rooduijn, 2018), or their presence over time. Some scholars theorise that it might be possible to identify “a populist voter”. However, the large N studies that have tried to identify commonalities of left- and right-wing populist voters shed light on a more complicated picture. When tested empirically, most of the features that were thought to be common to populist supporters across ideologies have demonstrated diverse tendencies across countries (e.g. Rooduijn, 2018). One possible explanation for the scarcity of cohesive results is the lack of studies that consider both contextual and time differences in their statistical models. From a demand-side perspective, there is consensus over the definition of populism as a context and time-dependent phenomenon; we are lacking studies that investigate the latter aspect. Previous research has identified many relevant cross-sectional explanatory factors. Still, the crucial issue of change over time and how individual-level outcomes may depend on time-varying social, political, and economic conditions are so far left mostly unanswered. Thus, this study aims to investigate whether the motivations unifying voters of populist parties from left and right-wing ideologies have been consistently relevant in explaining the support for these parties across time and whether it is possible to identify a “periodization” of individual motives at different time-periods. Accordingly, this study explores the presence of commonalities among the voter base of populist parties across countries and across time by using nine waves of ESS data (2002-2018), in seven countries that have had established and successful populist parties for the whole period.