Navigating Uncertainty: The Impact of Moving Out on Populist Attitudes.

Despite the growing interest and trend in populism in many Western Countries (Krause & Wagner, 2021), there is a shortage of studies examining the long-term individual factors that explain changes within individuals over time. Populist attitudes (Akkerman et al. 2014 & Hawkings et al.2012), when analysed longitudinally, showed neither variability nor consistency (Schimpf et al., 2023). In addition, regarding age as a factor that can influence populism, most research agrees that the young are more likely to develop populist interests, and the elderly are less sensitive to the populist phenomenon (Neundorf &Pardos-Prado 2022.; Heiss & Matthes, 2017; Körner et al., 2023). However, existing research focusing on the impact of age on populism has neglected the study of how life transitions affect the development and change of populist attitudes. This paper aims to fill this gap by bringing forth explanations based on life transitions, a term that refers to changes in status in the life cycle that are discrete and bounded in duration, although their consequences may be long-term (George, 1993). Life transitions are not entirely alien to the study of populism, although most research has only considered the economic verge of this phenomenon (Davou & Demertzis, 2014; Kriesi & Pappas, 2015; Zagórski et al., 2021), and usually without adopting a dynamic or longitudinal perspective. This paper develops a novel theoretical framework by proposing life transitions as a factor of influence in populist attitudes. Besides, it focuses its attention on very specific life transitions relating to living arrangements such as emancipation, returning to the parental house, living alone and separating from your partner and living apart. For this purpose, the paper draws on panel data collected in Spain between 2014 and 2024. Fixed-effect linear panel regression models show that the transition to living alone has a more significant impact on populist attitudes than others, such as emancipation and moving in with a partner.