Correlates of Populist Attitudes in Canada: Evidence from the CES

Rafael Campos-Gottardo, McGill University, MA

January 19, 2024

Motivation

What is populism then?

Populism: The ideational approach

  • Populism is a thin ideology that can be combined with other ideologies but contains a distinct set of ideas.
  • Drawing on the work of Mudde (2004) and Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser (2018) populism has:
    1. A Manichean moral cosmology
    2. The people understood as homogeneous and virtuous
    3. The elite understood as corrupt and self-severing

Populist Attitudes

  • Understand populism as a supply and demand side phenomenon
  • Populist attitudes are pervasive across most societies
  • Populist attitudes predict voting for populist leaders
  • Correlates of populist attitudes can help explain variation in levels of populist attitudes across individuals.

Measuring Populist Atitudes

Correlates of Populist Attitudes

Psychological Correlates

Personality

  • Conscientiousness is positively related to populist attitudes (Pruysers 2021).

Personality

  • Past research has shown that openness to experience is not related to populist attitudes (Fatke 2019; Pruysers 2021).
  • However, openness to experience is linked to more interest in politics but not more political knowledge in Canada (Blanchet 2019).
  • Therefore, the aesthetic component of openness to experience may be related to a desire for new forms of political representation (Mohrenberg, Huber, and Freyburg 2021).

Need for Cognition

  • Theoretically a need for cognition should be negatively related to populist attitudes (Fletcher et al. 1986):
    • Empirical studies show that depending on context and measurement technique this relationship differs (Erisen et al. 2021).
    • Given, that need for cognition is related to political sophistication in Canada (Blanchet 2019), and populism favours simple solutions need for cognition should be negatively related to populist attitudes (Moffitt 2015).

Social Trust

Political Correlates

  • Institutional trust is consistently related to high levels of populist attitudes (Rooduijn, Brug, and Lange 2016).
  • Negative feelings towards politicians are related to populist attitudes.
  • Dissatisfaction with how democracy works is related to populist attitudes (Zanotti and Rama 2021; Zaslove and Meijers 2023).
  • If populism is less appealing for Canadians, then are political factors, that have not been activated, more closely linked to populist attitudes?

Alternative Canada Specific Explanaitons

Hypotheses

  • Psychological Correlates:
    • H1a: Conscientiousness is positively related to populist attitudes
    • H1b: Openness to experience is positively related to populist attitudes
    • H1c: Need for Cognition is positively related to populist attitudes

Hypotheses (cont’)

  • Political Factors:
    • H2: When controlling for political factors the relationship between psychological factors will become weaker or non-significant

Hypotheses (cont’)

  • Canada specific factors:
    • H3: When controlling for Canada specific factors the relationship between psychological and political factors and populist attitudes will be unchanged.

Methods

Dataset and Variables

  • 2021 Canadian Election Study (CES), Post Election Study (PES)
  • DV: Populist Attitudes (Hobolt et al. 2016) - Additive Index (6 items).
  • Psychological Correlates:

Variables (cont’)

  • Political correlates:
    • Institutional trust, satisfaction with democracy, feelings towards politicians, belief of government efficacy and efficiency.
  • Canada Specific controls:
    • Western Canadian, Feelings Towards the PPC, Feelings towards the CPC

Results

Descriptive Statistics for Populist Attitudes

Means and Standard Errors for Populist Attitudes and Items Used to Construct Populist Attitudes Scale

Psychological Correlates

OLS Regression Models for Psychological Correlates with populist attitudes as the dependent variable and “HC0” standard errors

Political Controls

OLS Regression Models and “HC0” Standard Errors for Political Controls Correlates with populist attitudes as the dependent variable

Canda Specific Controls

OLS Regression Models and “HC0” Standard Errors for Canada Specific Controls Correlates with populist attitudes as the dependent variable

Discussion

Psychological Underpinning of Populist Attitudes

  • Contrary to previous findings in Canada (Pruysers 2021), conscientiousness is not related to populist attitudes.
    • Consistent with findings about populist leaders who score low on conscientiousness (Nai and Coma 2019).

Psychological Underpinning of Populist Attitudes

  • Need for cognition & openness to experience are both positively related to populist attitudes.
    • Indicate that populists in Canada may be willing to support new forms of political representation and more willing to actively engage in politics (See Kioupkiolis 2016).

Political Factors and Controls

  • Institutional trust, negative feelings towards politicians, and dissatisfaction with democracy are positively related to populist attitudes.
  • When controlling for political factors openness to experience and need for cognition remain positively related to populist attitudes.

Political Factors and Controls (Cont’)

  • These results indicate that Canadians may have a psychological predisposition towards populism.
  • Inconsistent results with regards to Canada specific correlates.
    • Indicating that these factors may be related to voting for populists but not support for the populist ideology.

Limitations and Next Steps

  • Limitations:
    • Only one item to measure need for cognition.
  • Next steps:
    • Include the 2019 CES which also includes a measure of populist attitudes to measure the stability of populist attitudes over time.
    • Examine interactions effects between need for cognition and openness to experience (which I briefly touch on in the paper).

Thank You!

  • Email: Rafael.Campos-Gottardo@mail.mcgill.ca
  • Twitter: @RafaelGottardo

References

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