A matter of establishment: The role of populist attitudes and conspiracy mentality in populist voting

European party systems are witnessing an increasing establishment of populist parties. Yet, a higher level of establishment of a populist party blurs its self-claimed antagonism towards the “elite” and challenges its outsider-status. This raises important questions about the appeal of anti-establishment sentiments put forward by populist parties. Recent studies show that keeping this image alive creates the pressure for populists in power to rely more on conspiratorial discourse as a measure of reframing the “corrupt elite”. However, it remains unclear whether this shift in discourse from anti-elite towards conspiratorial rhetoric is mirrored on the individual-level. In this paper, we theorize that as populist parties become more established, citizens’ vote choice increasingly becomes a function of their conspiracy mentality, in contrast to anti-elitist attitudes, which in turn should play a subordinate role in such cases. To test this argument, we draw on individual-level data from Round 10 of the European Social Survey (2020-2022), supplemented with context-level data on the establishment of populist parties. Accordingly, we conduct multi-level regressions with cross-level interactions. By considering the different developmental stages of populist parties, we provide a more nuanced and context-sensitive evaluation of populist attitudes and conspiracy mentality as drivers for populist voting.