Disentangling Thick and Thin Ideologies: Party-Voter Congruence along Ideological and Populism Dimensions

Representation in multi-party democracies relies on some degree of congruence between the policy positions of parties and their voters. Decades of research show that the distance between voters and parties in the policy space is one of the clearest predictors of voting. If a party wants to be successful, it is in its best interest to position itself close to its potential voters. The rise of populist parties in Europe is, arguably, a phenomenon that shows the political parties may be quite far from the voters in the policy space and still win votes. A possible explanation for it is the idea that populism is a separate dimension, distinct from the policy content of the ideologies. The growing research on populism has argued that populism is a thin ideology, and as such it co-exists with the ‘thick’ ideologies on the left and right sides of the political spectrum. Populist right parties adhere to such components of the right-wing ideologies as nativism and authoritarianism. On the left side, left-wing populism builds on the core ideas of the far-left: anti-capitalism and egalitarianism. We use recent VAA data from Romania, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, France, and the UK to locate parties and voters in the policy (ideological) space and along the populism dimension. The analysis shows that while there is significant congruence between populist parties and their voters, it can only to a limited extent be explained by their congruence on the populism scale.