Why Do Europeans Support Populists?
What explains the rise of ‘populist’ parties in Europe – defined as those that claim to speak for ‘ordinary people’ while opposing the ‘corrupt establishment’? Academic political scientists (who lean overwhelmingly left) have emphasised factors like austerity, income inequality and ‘disinformation’. But these theories don’t make much sense.
Populists themselves claim that they represent voters who’ve been dismissed, ignored or forgotten by the mainstream parties – that they fill gaps in political representation. Is this true? A new paper suggests that yes, it is true.
Laurenz Günther combined information from two surveys that posed the same (or highly similar) questions to voters and candidates for political office. These were the European Voter Survey and the European Candidate Survey (both fielded in 2009). By comparing the answers of voters and elected politicians, he was able to see how similar their views are on different issues, and hence how well-represented voters are by their politicians.
In terms of analysis, Günther began by creating two broad indexes. This involved calculating for each respondent (i.e., each voter and each politician) the weighted average of their views on different issues, with weights equal to the overall importance of those issues according to voters. This was done separately for cultural issues like immigration and the EU, and economic issues like taxation and public ownership. Günther then plotted the two indexes against each other on a graph:
Here the shading simply represents the density of points, with purple referring to voters and green referring to politicians. What does the graph show? While voters have similar views to politicians on economic issues (the purple cloud overlaps substantially with the green cloud on the x-axis), they are much more right-wing on cultural issues (the purple cloud is much closer to the ‘far-right’ end of the y-axis). This is the first indication that populists do fill representation gaps.
Next, Günther calculated the difference between voters’ and politicians’ views on each separate issue. He found that it was largest on criminal sentencing and immigration, with voters being much more right-wing. Hence it is these issues that drive the gaps in political representation.
He then calculated each party’s representation gap with respect to the average voter on the two indexes mentioned above, and graphed the results. As you can see, mainstream parties are much more left-wing on the cultural index. Consequently, nationalist parties are (with a few minor exceptions) the only ones that represent culturally right-wing voters.
In the final part of his analysis, Günther used data from Germany to show that voters who are not well-represented by mainstream parties with respect to immigration (as measured by the difference between their views and the views of politicians from the closest non-AfD party) are much more likely to vote for the right-wing populist AfD. Which is pretty much a smoking gun for the representation gap theory.
Forget all the pontificating about austerity, inequality and disinformation. What’s happened in Europe over the last ten years is simple. A sizeable number of voters wanted less immigration but none of the mainstream parties represented them. As a result, populist parties came in to fill the gap.
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Would be nice to see the points for the UK parties
…particularly concerning ‘green’/net zero matters.
I think Noah’s last paragraph nails it, pretty much. There are other things, of course. People are suffering under all of the agendas being pushed by governments in the West, but immigration is the biggie. On the topic of Europe and migrants…More regarding the paying off by the German government of actual dangerous criminals, just to get them out of the country. Sounds like a deterrent to me ( not ); ”Last week, the German government, led by social democrat Olaf Scholz, deported 28 convicted criminals to Kabul. Among them was a rejected asylum-seeker who took part in the brutal and cunning gang rape of a 14-year-old girl. According to the German mainstream media, each of the deported criminals, including the gang rapist, was given 1000 Euros in cash to help start a new life back home in Afghanistan. This is civilizational decline in action. It’s essentially a new Danegeld, one that sees Taxpayer’s money paid out by a morally adrift leftist system that prostrates itself in front of child-raping criminals for fear of being thought of as ‘racist,’ ‘uncaring,’ and ‘impolite.” Under Merkel, persecuted people—brave Afghan Hazara women or Iranian women fighting against tyranny—were left in limbo in countries like Turkey… Read more »
Blinded by Germany’s current prosperity,
This is ebbing away on a weekly basis as companies file for bankruptcy, close down or move production out of Germany. Educated young Germans are leaving in drives creating a skills shortage for companies remaining in Germany. Tax income that relies a lot on sales tax is falling fast as people are getting poorer due to rising costs and of course high electricity costs due to the Energiewende insanity.
Sorry but you can’t represent my views on social issues and economic issues with a dot on a two dimensional graph. Not in a way that is anything but superficial and ultimately meaningless.
In any case, I don’t need a contrived pseudo-scientific study to explain why “populist” politicians are gaining popularity.
The establishment is aggressively pushing policies that are radical and unpopular. Net zero, large scale immigration, trans rights, equity and diversity being several clear examples.
And to make it even worse, the establishment labels opposition to these policies as extremist when it is the policies that are extremist and the opposition which is sensible and moderate. i.e. it is gaslighting the population.
So any politician who stands up to establishment radicalism is going to (a) get the support of people and (b) be called radical, extremist, far right etc.
There’s the entire explanation right there. No need for contrived graphs.
The only way to represent and analyse the views of large numbers of people is graphically.
paragraph after paragraph describing the views of each interviewee would not get to the heart of the matter.
That sounds sensible. But reasoning along those lines is probably what “climate scientists” use to justify their bullshit models.
Some simplifications and approximations may serve as faithful enough representations of reality and some may be complete distortions. Some may say nothing at all.
It really depends. What I know for sure is that my political position cannot in any accurate or meaningful way be represented on that two dimensional graph. And I doubt very much most other people’s can either.
Your last paragraph. Quite so, and we all change our views and positions as we progress through life and events unfold.
Trying to quantify the qualifiable, beloved of Statists, to produce a number that is ‘representative’.
There is no representative view of a mass of people, there is no one animus, no single ‘Will of the People’.
Thus is why the Parties all wander around in an imaginary ‘centre ground’ which supposedly represents what everyone wants.
And having different shapes, rather than just different colours, helps those than can see different shapes, but not different colours.
Thank you.
Indeed. But sadly not enough Europeans support “populists” for many of them to get into power.
Less so if the electoral system is rigged to underrepresent them.
In any case, I agree support is still low and likely to remain that way for as long they suppress it with the mind trick and brainwashing that makes people think that moderate policies are extremist ones.
Yup, the mind trick might eventually be dispelled when things get really bad, but then I kept thinking the “covid” nonsense would collapse because it was so invasive and such obvious bollocks.
Maybe soon they wont be able to hide it……’It’ being the replacement of the native population and the crimes that they import. It is hard to hide the scumbags that go round stabbing young girls, even for those dumb middle classes who are the worst to drink the diversity & climate Kool Aid.
Not so far they don’t, but they will learn when any vote by anyone against what the “popular” desire is achieves exactly the opposite.
There will come a time when only 65% for AfD etc will be enough, and then the left will want to change the rules.
After 14 years of unconservative government from the Tories, SIX MILLION people still voted for them despite a credible alternative (Reform) being available.
Astonishing really.
But really once you realise that everything in the human mind is a huge simulation made up of simplified representations of physical reality plus models of made up, abstract ideas, then you can’t help but accept how susceptible to programming we are.
I would say you can probably predict to a very high degree of certainty how a person votes based on the media they consume.
Our media is our programming.
I think many did not think of Reform as being a credible party, which of course while they remain owned by Farage they are not. Their challenge is to take control from Farage and become a proper party as soon as possible. Next May’s local elections are crucial to the development of Reform.
What’s wrong with Farage, according to you, and why are they not a “proper party”? Proper or not, they were surely better than the Socialist Woke Tories.
Opinion polls show support for Reform as increasing substantially since the election. Reform are now pushing 20 percent.
It seems that the winning of real seats in the Commons has concentrated people’s minds.
Because we are all supremacists, racists, phobes, anti-science, uneducated, ill favored Nazis and Hitlers of course.
Right wing really is not a useful term to describe the demands of voters to protect our culture, social cohesion and safety. Left winger used to think those were important; just remember the arguments about coal mines in the UK in the 1979s and 1989s.
Left wing, socialist politics has been advancing relentlessly for over a hundred years based on one simple fiendish mind trick: making people think conservatism is right wing.
Conservatism is really by definition centrist. It is the ideology that things should remain as they are as much as possible and any changes should be slow and small. That is the very epitome of balance.
The opposite of making society more socialist and socially “progressive” isn’t not changing things and leaving it as it i. It’s making society LESS socialist and less socially progressive. But that hasn’t been much of an option in the last hundred or so years because everyone has been convinced that standing up firmly for keeping the status quo is “far right”.
Less Socialism is difficult to impose, but it comes from having more independent thinkers, more informed debate, a better understanding of reality, like there’s no money tree, and returning to traditional values in the Arts and Humanities, with Science and Engineering projects being influenced by, yes, those with Science and Engineering knowledge and experience.
Using ‘Not Left’ is as bad as ‘Don’t be negative’.
It would be interesting to repeat the analysis with more recent data. Have the purple and green blobs moved closer together or further apart?
I suspect they have moved further apart – unless the recent ‘populist’ elected politicians have had enough effect to broaden the green blob.
Some supporting evidence from Germany here;
”Support for another term of the federal coalition government is currently at 0 percent, according to the latest ZDF political barometer.
Just 23 percent of the country wants Chancellor Olaf Scholz to remain in post after the next federal election — 74 percent are against it.
Even supporters of his own SPD party want him gone at the election — 49 percent to 47 percent don’t want him to run as the party’s candidate for chancellor.”
https://x.com/RMXnews/status/1832061998772711486
Why do Europeans support those politicians whose policies will best serve their wishes and interests rather than those of the entrenched ruling elite and a globalist nexus of fraudsters, grifters, charlatans, misanthropes, and evil-doers whose intent is to immiserate and impoverish them?
Let me think.
“While voters have similar views to politicians on economic issues…”
Evidence from observation shows that neither politicians nor voters have the faintest idea about economics, so that diagram is meaningless.
Proof: a welfare state complete with its magic money tree, fiat money, astronomic debt.
The notion of a welfare state was invented by Otto v. Bismarck as one prong of his two-pronged strategy to fight socialism (the other was outlawing socalist parties like the SPD). But the German Empire had (until 1914) a gold-based currency and strictly adhered to the principle that the state cannot spend money it didn’t earn first.
It bears repeating here that the AfD is a centre-right party whose manifesto contains all the usual classics for that, eg, end the ever closer political union in favour of an EU composed of cooperating souvereign nations. Or Gerxit, if France won’t have that. let the people elect the president of Germany directly make abuse of public funds a criminal offence no EU army end sanctions against Russia reintroduce national service maintain a cash economy for the economic freedom of the people eventually repatriate German gold reserves and reintroduce a national currency more effective frontline policing and better working conditions for police officers end the practice of using terrorism as excuse to impose ever more onerous arms/ weapons restrictions on law-abiding citizens stop benefits tourism no muslim ‘underground state’/ sharia law in Germany, no agitation on behalf of foreign powers in mosques built and controlled by them restore the constitutional ius sanguinis as foundation of German citizenship Link to the complete manifesto in English: https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2017-04-12_afd-grundsatzprogramm-englisch_web.pdf It’s worth having a look at that to get an idea what Scholze, Faeser, Lang and their ilk really refer to when they apply the label Nazi to their political opponentw (the ‘Nazi-light’ label right… Read more »
Populism is a smear name. To the liberal elites it is a name used to imply dog whistle, the mob, thoughtless politics. As a result it is ok to ignore and or also call it far right.
Could it be that we are sick of having to endure taxation, pain and misery for things that we know are not true, and corruption of our society and government by the very people who we have supposedly put in those places by our ‘democratic process’.
Great article Noah, but for crying out loud,
“In terms of analysis, Günther began by creating two broad indexes”
=
“Günther began by creating two broad indexes”
Please, avoid the ridiculous phrase ‘in terms of‘. It rarely contributes anything to an argument, while making the speaker sound like a Labour politician or BBC sports programme presenter (or just about anyone else on television for that matter).
Er, because they are popular?
LOL. Unpopular populism? We already know populism is popular because it meets unmet political needs. Let us not forget the loony left racist antisemitic genocidal rent-a-mob for months has been demonstrating against Israel and for the genocide of all Israelis ‘from the river to the sea‘. There are so many political issues affecting the majority to protest about but they ignore them. Those issues are politically inconvenient and predominantly affect indigenous white people in the UK. And they tell us migrants are welcome all the while as fighting age young men literally invade illegally our shores in rubber boats. This is whilst failing to protest against homelessness of our ex-military and the mental health issues they suffer like PTSD. They fail to protest homelessness of 80,000 young Brits. They fail to protest the collapse of public services like health and GP appointments. They fail to protest the scandal of joblessness in the many deprived regions of the UK. And why do they protest gender equality for a tiny minority? Its because they have run out of issues like ‘gay’ rights which are no longer a problem. Is there a political ‘Right’? Or is it that the existence of views dubbed… Read more »
They say Tony Benn was a ‘good’ Leftist, against handing sovereignty away is very commendable. People mention Ken Livingstone but they should watch when he was interviewed on GBN about Lockdowns. Their authoritarian streek breaks out.
With long gaol terms for tweets, given enough time we’ll all be in the gas chambers faster than two shakes of a lamb’s tail for voting against them.
I think it is more fundamental than that. Establishment parties aren’t just more Left wing on social issues – the issues they care about and talk about are different from the voters.
Establishment parties care about net zero, diversity and inclusion, trans rights and virtue signalling globalist nonsense. The voters just want the politicians to sort out the mess of creaking public services, crumbling social cohesion, lack of patriotism and a cost of living crisis caused by expensive energy.
People can see that the obsessions of the Establishment are wrecking the foundations of our society, and they want that to stop.
They say the madness will end when all the money runs out!
If our Labour government follows the lead of the Tories of the last 14 years, borrowing £128 billion pa it will soon especially if interest rates jump to 15% in one day as they did once before.
It won’t be £100 billion pa in interest repayments but £300 billion pa, so the borrowing of £128 billion pa will jump to £328 billion pa – roughly.