Populist politics lost support during the pandemic, research found

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Donald Trump listens to crowd cheer at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Populist parties and politicians around the world lost support during the coronavirus pandemic, a survey of more than half a million people found.

Published Tuesday by Cambridge University’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy, the study had more than half a million participants in 109 countries. The research team has been monitoring the political attitudes of the participants since 2020.

According to the report, there are clear signs that the so-called “populist wave”-which has seen radical and anti-establishment leaders, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, rise to power-may wane.

The mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis by populist leaders, a desire for stability and a decrease in polarizing attitudes prevented public opinion from populist sentiment, the researchers said. Populist leaders were also considered less trustworthy as sources of information related to Covid than their counterparts, according to the poll.

The pandemic spurred a shift toward technocratic politics, the paper said, which boosted confidence in governments and experts such as scientists.

“The story of politics in recent years has been the emergence of anti-establishment politicians who have thrived on the growing distrust of experts,” Roberto Foa, the report’s lead author, said in a statement Tuesday. “From [Turkey’s] Erdogan at [Brazil’s] Bolsonaro to the ‘strong man’ of Eastern Europe, the planet has experienced a wave of political populism. Covid-19 may have caused that wave tension. “

Foa added that support for anti-establishment parties has fallen around the world in a way not seen by more “mainstream” politicians.

Co-author Xavier Romero-Vidal added that the pandemic created “a sense of shared purpose that may have reduced the political polarization we’ve seen over the past decade.”

“It may help explain why populist leaders struggle to mobilize support,” he said.

Between the spring of 2020 and the last quarter of 2021, population leaders saw an average approval rating drop of 10 percentage points, the study found. In Europe, the proportion of people wishing to vote for a populist party dropped by an average of 11 percentage points to 27% over the same period.

While European support for incumbent parties rose during the early lockdown, the continent’s leading populist parties-including Italy’s Five Star Movement and Hungary’s Fidesz-experienced the largest decline in support.

Opposition populist parties also lost support during the pandemic, while “mainstream” opposition parties gained supporters.

Approval of the way governments handled the crisis in Covid also showed growing skepticism over the ability of populist leaders. In June 2020, public approval of how countries with populist leaders handled the pandemic was an average of 11 percentage points lower than the approval of countries with central governments. By the end of 2020, the gap has widened to 16 points.

Statements associated with populism, such as dislike of “corrupt elites” and a desire to satisfy “the will of the people”, have also seen a decline in support, the report found. The number of people who say they agree with similar statements will drop by approximately 10 percentage points in Italy, the UK and France between 2019 and 2021.

Meanwhile, researchers found that political “tribalism” – expressed by party supporters expressing “extreme aversion” to those who voted for opposing politicians – was declining in most countries. In the US, however, this so -called tribalism has not weakened.

Lack of faith in democracy

Despite the findings, the researchers said the decline in populist support did not lead to greater faith in liberal democracy.

While trust in governments continued to climb throughout the pandemic, rising an average of 3.4 percentage points in democratic countries around the world, faith in democracy as a political system increased.

“Democracy satisfaction has partially recovered since the post-war nadir of 2019, and is still below the long-term average,” Foa said. “Some of the biggest declines in democratic support during the pandemic were seen in Germany, Spain and Japan – countries with large populations of the elderly who are particularly vulnerable to the virus.”

In the US, the number of participants who considered democracy a bad way to run their country more than doubled from 10.5% in 2019 to 25.8% in 2021.

The research team found that around the world, many individuals instead favor technocratic sources of authority, such as allowing experts to make policy decisions.

In the summer of 2020, the belief that experts should be allowed to make decisions “according to what they think is best for the country” rose 14 points to 62% in Europe and 8 points to 57% in the United States.

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