Storm in a Teacup: Populist Attitudes and Voting for Populists in Croatia

Abstract

In comparative research on voting behavior, populist attitudes increasingly appear to be an unavoidable research construct. Nevertheless, the evidence on the effects of populist attitudes on voting for populists is still inconclusive, with the effects of other concepts often being conflated with populism. At the same time, populism remains an under-researched topic in Croatia, especially at the level of citizens’ attitudes. This study aims to research the effects of populist attitudes on voting for populist parties and candidates in Croatia, a country that can be considered a relevant case study. For these purposes, survey data from Croatian Election Studies (2018 and 2020 edition) is used. The results of multinominal logistic regressions show that populist attitudes have no effect on voting for populists in the context of parliamentary and presidential elections. It is also shown that populist attitudes increase the probability of electoral abstention and decrease the probability of voting for the ruling party (HDZ). These findings raise questions about the usefulness and functionality of existing scales of populist attitudes and indicate the need for a different framing of the items used to measure populism.

Keywords

• populist attitudes
• populist politicians
• populist political parties
• voting behavior
• elections