We Got Our Guy!: Populist Attitudes after Populists Gain Power

Abstract

Research on populist attitudes and populist leaders’ narratives has largely overlooked what happens to populist attitudes after a populist is elected, especially among the populist’s supporters. Existing literature points to two possible directions of change. On one hand, if populist attitudes stem from a perceived lack of representation, then we would expect people’s populist attitudes to decrease once their preferred candidate is in power. On the other hand, scholars have observed that populist politicians in power continue to deploy populist rhetoric, suggesting that their supporters’ populist attitudes should stay constant or even increase. In this project, the author focuses on Donald Trump and his supporters to explore this mechanism. Drawing on a national survey conducted around the 2016 and 2020 elections, the author shows that Trump’s supporters saw a significant decrease in populist attitudes after he came into power compared with both other American voters and other Republicans. The author also demonstrates that this decrease in populist attitudes is associated with changes in the level of “feeling represented.” On the basis of these findings, the author argues that populist attitudes are driven by feelings of lack of representation over other mechanisms.