Demand without Supply: Populist Attitudes without Salient Supply-Side Factors of Populism

Abstract

AbstractPopulism's electoral success has been linked to socio-economic crises and to inflammatory political discourse. However, little is known of populist attitudes in contexts in which these supply-side factors are not salient. The present article diverges from the conception of populism that sees it as being activated or fuelled by contextual factors and, rather, conceives populism as an ideological attitudinal dimension that can have an impact on vote choice when supply-side factors are not salient. Using the particular context of the 2015 Canadian federal election as a case to test this theory, empirical analyses support this conception of populism by demonstrating that populist attitudes can be relatively prominent and even impact vote choice in a setting in which the traditional supply-side factors to activate or fuel populism are not salient. Ultimately, populism is shown to be an important demand-side attitudinal dimension even when there is little or no fertile ground for it.