Who votes for populists in Latin America? It depends upon if the populist is the president

Theories of populist party emergence suggest that voters tend to support populist parties not only due to agreement with their ideological project but also when a lack of trust in state institutions, a lack of belief in democracy, or perceived problems with corruption convince them that populists’ claims that conspiring elites are blocking the general will are valid. However, most of the empirical work for these propositions has been collected in regions and eras when populists are not in power. We propose that these dynamics change when populists are in power. We take advantage of recently collected expert-survey data from Latin America that codes levels of populism at the party level to model vote intentions for populist parties inside and outside of government using cross-sectional survey data from 18 Latin American countries. We find that support for populist parties who do not control the presidency is consistent with prior work: holding their ideology constant, individuals who have low levels of trust in state institutions or in global financial institutions or who believe that corruption is pervasive in society and business are more likely to support populist challenger parties than non-populist parties. However, support for populist presidents is higher among those who trust state institutions or who believe that the state is performing well; if anything, views of economic performance and of state institutions are more strongly connected to support for the president in countries where the president is populist than in countries where they are not. So while democratic deficits and poor governance provide openings for populists to take office, they stay in office because of their strong performance.