Who Votes for Populists in Central and Eastern Europe? A Comparative Perspective from Five EU Member States

The post-communist party politics in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is characterized by two distinct periods. On the one hand, the first decade (i.e. the 1990s) witnesses strong electoral competition between successor communist parties and political formations (i.e. parties, coalitions, or alliances) opposing them. On the other hand, the second decade displays a general success of the populist parties. Their isolated electoral fortunes in the first three post-communist elections dramatically changed and populist parties secured both relevant amount of seats in the legislatures (i.e. Romania 2000, Poland 2001, Slovakia 2002), but also became crucial actors in the government coalition (Bulgaria 2011, Romania 2004, Poland 2005, Slovakia 2006) or parliamentary opposition (Bulgaria 2005, Hungary 2006). The empirical puzzle derived from the populist ascendant trends observed in the CEE countries starting the year of 2000 is: who votes for theses parties? This article aims to identify the profile of citizens casting their vote for the populist parties. In doing so, we use individual-level data from five CEE countries with the most prominent presence of populists on the political scene: Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia. By using survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (modules 2 and 3), we account for two elections in each country in the 2001-2008 time period. We employ both bivariate and multivariate analyses to detect similarities and differences in voting behavior within and across the specified countries.