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Cited by 1,148Populism, Right-Wing MovementsElectoral Systems and Political ParticipationPolitical Theory and Democracy

How Populist Are the People? Measuring Populist Attitudes in Voters

Akkerman, Agnes, Mudde, Cas, Zaslove, Andrej·2014·Comparative Political Studies
DOI 10.1177/0010414013512600
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Abstract

The sudden and perhaps unexpected appearance of populist parties in the 1990s shows no sign of immediately vanishing. The lion’s share of the research on populism has focused on defining populism, on the causes for its rise and continued success, and more recently on its influence on government and on public policy. Less research has, however, been conducted on measuring populist attitudes among voters. In this article, we seek to fill this gap by measuring populist attitudes and to investigate whether these attitudes can be linked with party preferences. We distinguish three political attitudes: (1) populist attitudes, (2) pluralist attitudes, and (3) elitist attitudes. We devise a measurement of these attitudes and explore their validity by way of using a principal component analysis on a representative Dutch data set ( N = 600). We indeed find three statistically separate scales of political attitudes. We further validated the scales by testing whether they are linked to party preferences and find that voters who score high on the populist scale have a significantly higher preference for the Dutch populist parties, the Party for Freedom, and the Socialist Party.

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Crossref · 10.1177/0010414013512600

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62 of 62 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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  • Research has shown that populist attitudes, analytical thinking, numerical thinking, bullshit receptivity, conspiracy mentality, news checking frequency, and social media use are associated with susceptibility to misinformation.

    “we also included the following measures as covariates, which research has shown are associated with susceptibility to misinformation:”

    From Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media (2022) · cites this paper as [35]

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Authors
Akkerman, A., Mudde, C., & Zaslove, A.
Affiliations
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
  • University System of Georgia (US)
  • Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
ORCID
Venue
Comparative Political Studies
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2013-12-17
Volume
47
Issue
9
Pages
1324-1353
ISSN
  • 0010-4140 (ISSN-L)
  • 1552-3829
DOI
10.1177/0010414013512600
OpenAlex
W2126632676
Cited by
1,148
References
62
Citations by year
2026: 79 · 2025: 153 · 2024: 154 · 2023: 158 · 2022: 128 · 2021: 136 · 2020: 84 · 2019: 113 · 2018: 58 · 2017: 48 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 4
FWCI
68.96
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • Comparative Political Studies (publishedVersion)
  • VU Research Portal (publishedVersion)
  • Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
Keywords
populism, populist attitudes, populist parties, party preference, attitude measurement, scale validation, Party for Freedom, socialist parties, Dutch voters

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