Are Populists Politically Intolerant? Citizens’ Populist Attitudes and Tolerance of Various Political Antagonists

Abstract

Political tolerance—the willingness to extend civil rights to political antagonists—is a key democratic norm. We argue that because voters with populist attitudes have an ambiguous relationship with democracy and keep a narrow definition of the people, they are more likely to be politically intolerant. We study the Netherlands, a less likely case to find political intolerance. Using data from a representative household panel survey ( n = 1999), we investigate the extent to which populist attitudes translate into general intolerant attitudes and specific intolerance toward political antagonists. Our analyses show that voters with stronger populist attitudes are less supportive of democratic norms, more intolerant of opposing views online, and of specific political opponents. However, they are not explicitly intolerant by limiting individual civil rights or supporting intolerant measures toward political antagonists. These findings show that even in a system engrained with compromise, populist citizens show signs of political intolerance.