Populist parties and their voters: a PODS analytical brief

The last decade has seen a wave of mass support for far-right and populist parties around the world and concomitant concerns over growing polarization in democratic societies. What explains this shift away from the consensus liberalism and centrism of the 1990s and the early 2000s? The academic literature that focuses on the rise of populism, and specifically right populism, provides a set of prevailing explanations that help to illuminate the causes of this broader trend. These studies usually centre one of the following key causes:

1.       economic factors (either long-term and structural or as a short-term consequence of the Global Financial Crisis and accompanying austerity),

2.       socio-cultural factors such as migration, religion, identity politics, and social change, or

3.       the rise of the internet or more specifically, social media.[1]

While the causes of any political tendency are necessarily heterogenous and a mix of the above factors, the focus on larger forces elides how voters themselves understand their support for parties that have moved away from the traditional center. How do voters of major parties in polarized countries like Brazil, India, and the United States perceive their democracy, and when and how do they differ from their fellow citizens and political opponents?

To answer this question, we will below examine the perceptions and values of citizens who voted for  three major conservative parties in some of the world’s largest democracies - Brazil’s Liberal Party (PL), India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the United States’ Republican Party – and compare them to those who voted for their domestic political rivals or did not vote all.[2]

Could the current and novel levels of mass support for these parties be due to some peculiarities in the electorate itself? Do people who vote for these conservative parties hold different beliefs about politics, personal values, or otherwise distinguish themselves from their fellow citizens in noteworthy ways? What drives support for these parties, and how deeply attached are their voters? In this analysis, the relevant questions from the PODS survey touch on (a) personal values, (b) beliefs about government, and (c) whether people believe they are better or worse off economically than their parents.

Personal values and political choices

We can begin by seeing if and in what ways supporters of conservative parties in polarized political systems hold different personal values than either their main political opponents or non-voters. PODS measured personal values by asking respondents which values they believed children should learn.

The radically different cultural contexts in each country might suggest that it would be highly unlikely for BJP, PL and Republican voters to share a common set of values, or to differ from their political opponents or non-voters in an identical way. However, there are certain values – patriotism, family, and faith, for example – that would indicate a match between personal and political conservative values.

In Brazil, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro’s PL were far more likely than Workers’ Party (PT) voters or non-voters to say patriotism and faith were important value for children to learn (see Figure 1 below).  Brazil is unique in this analysis in that these three groups do not differ significantly in any other value in the survey, perhaps reflecting the novelty of mass support for the PL (once a minor party, Bolsonaro essentially took over the PL and transformed it into a vehicle for his personal candidacy) or how voters can compartmentalize their personal values and political beliefs even in a highly polarized political context.

Figure 1. Percentage of respondents who said a given value was important for a child to learn. Text is bolded where responses between political parties differ by more than ten percentage points.

This is not the case in the United States, where personal values are frequently sharply divided between Democrats and Republicans. The latter group is much more likely than either Democrats or non-voters to say faith, family and patriotism are important values, and Democrats are more likely than Republicans and non-voters to prioritize empathy. Republicans and Democrats are also polarized on obedience, equality and faith, with non-voters between the two groups (see Figure 1 above). The second-wave feminist argument that ‘the personal is political’ holds true in the United States in a way it does not in Brazil.  

If the United States represents one end of a spectrum of personal/political polarization and Brazil the other, India falls comfortably in the middle. BJP voters are less likely to believe in the importance of justice and equality than Indian National Congress (INC) voters and non-voters, and INC voters are less interested in faith and patriotism than their fellow citizens, but all respondents are roughly unified on the other five values available as survey responses. In other words, it is INC voters that are more secular and less interested in instilling patriotic values in children than the rest of Indians – BJP voters are essentially indistinguishable on these counts from non-voters. 

A question of further interest for understanding between countries where polarization is deeply rooted and where it is only superficially established – and how, exactly different value systems, which exist in every democratic state, become entrenched alongside partisan lines.

How should a government govern?

The PODS survey asked respondents to agree or disagree with a set of statements about the efficacy and desirability of certain aspects of democracy as a system, ranging from the limits of freedom of expression to the importance of gender equality in political representation: 

The conservative parties in this analysis are frequently labeled right ‘populist’ by observers and political opponents, with the intimation being they draw support by questioning the efficacy and importance of democratic institutions as an impediment to “getting things done.” In this understanding support for right (and left) populist parties is naturally tied to skepticism about the value of democracy as a political system, rather than disparate cultural and economic forces.. However, supporters of three parties in this analysis did not differ from non-voters and their opponents’ supporters in most of the above questions. 

In India, BJP supporters were 13 percentage points more likely to say that a government that wins an election should govern and make policies as it sees fit than INC supporters (65 and 52 per cent, respectively), but otherwise did not differ from INC supporters or non-voters.

In Brazil and the United States, the starkest differences are found on the question of gender equality. Only 24 per cent of Republicans agreed or strongly agreed that gender equality was a goal worth pursuing, compared to 78 per cent of Democrats and 48 per cent of non-voters. In Brazil, 76 per cent of PT voters agreed, compared to 62 per cent of non-voters and 56 per cent of PL supporters. In India, however, BJP voters were as likely to say gender equality was important as INC voters.

Figure 2. Percentage of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with a value statements divided by vote choice.

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These disparities in Brazil and the United States speak to the politicization of ‘gender’ in both countries. America has been “consumed by a moral panic over trans people” for several years, and Brazil is the country where in 2017 protesters attack and burned in effigy gender studies professor Judith Butler. Both Bolsonaro and Donald Trump are famous for misogynistic comments and behaviour, and both have promised to crusade against “gender ideology”, a vague term that “denote policies or activism aimed at improving gender equality and upholding the rights of women and the LGBTQI community.”

In these two countries – and elsewhere in the West – contemporary right populism differs from its antecedents by not so much promising economic redistribution to the working and middle classes, but in promising a return to a set of imagined patriarchal and gender norms. 

In India, as the results above show, both BJP and INC voters value gender equality as a policy goal at similar - and high - levels. One possibility for this outcome is that gender representation has simply not been politicized at all in India. Moreover, the BJP has  undertaken a successful years-long outreach to women voters  that portrays party support and activism as compliant with its conservative Hindu interpretation of women’s role in society. 

Believing oneself to be ‘worse off’ and support for populism

The final question of this analysis is whether respondents believe they are better or worse off than their parents. This question is relevant as a commonly cited source of support for populist parties is its supporters’ belief that they are being ‘left behind’ by the course of economic events: 

In Brazil an outright majority of respondents believe they are doing better than their parents and responses do not vary according to vote choice.  In India an outright majority of BJP voters also believed themselves to be doing better than their parents. INC voters and non-voters were not as consistently enthusiastic but also, on net, believed themselves to be doing better: if we subtract the percentage who said they were worse off from the percentage who said they were better off, BJP voters had a net positivity of 32 per cent, INC voters 8 per cent and non-voters 9 per cent. Brazilian voters are even more similar on this measure: PL voters had a net positivity of 12 per cent, PT 11 per cent and non-voters 9 percent.

As shown below in Figure 3, the case is different in the United States: Democratic voters are very likely to say they are doing better off and Republicans and non-voters very likely to say they are doing worse. Republican and non-voters have net negative scores of -15 and -14 per cent, respectively, in sharp contrast to Democratic voters’ net positivity of 17 per cent. However, it must be kept in mind that at the time the survey was conducted under a Democratic president and before the BJP’s electoral setback in the 2024 general election. 

           As Figure 3. Respondents compare their economic condition to that of their parents, separated by vote choice.

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While a concern about a loss of socioeconomic status is a frequently cited as explaining support for parties like the contemporary Republicans and the United States has experienced decades of growing inequality, this finding is curious in this specific case. Its voters are frequently found to be more sanguine about economic and social inequality in the United States and only in recent months have Republican intellectuals even begun to seriously discuss whether the party should consider the issue at all. 

Taking these results and those on the issue of gender equality together invites us to reflect on how changes in gender roles and expectations are intertwined with more economic expectations. As the sociologist Melinda Cooper has argued, contemporary Republican politics can be understood as a counterrevolution against changing gender norms and “an insurrection of one form of capitalism (the private, the closely held or unincorporated and often family based) against another (the corporate, the publicly traded and shareholder owned).”

Some of the above differences are, in all likelihood, related to recent electoral outcomes; the responses of Democratic and Republican voters might converge or even reverse under a Republican presidential administration. But it is worth considering that, at least in the three countries in this analysis, the strong correlation of perceptions of long-term, intergenerational progress and short-term electoral outcomes appears to be somewhat unique. While respondents are not likely to be providing a strictly objective assessment of their personal economic circumstances, understanding what causes this affective discontent, and why it is less prevalent in other countries, will be key to reducing the polarization in American politics and in other societies experiencing the same phenomenon.

Varieties of polarization?

The divergent value systems and issues and levels of polarization across the three countries analyzed here invite us to reexamine how polarized these societies are at the popular level. Brazilians clearly diverge on their affinity for the Workers Party but are otherwise in general agreement in terms of personal values and questions of democratic governance. American voters, on the other hand, appear much more deeply polarized on both counts, and with non-voters much more likely to resemble those who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 than those who voted for Donald Trump. India lies between these two poles, with the lack of a highly polarized electorate providing one explanation for the surprising outcome of the 2024 general elections. 

Overcoming polarization and avoiding the dangers of populism requires a two-pronged approach, the first being strengthening the countervailing institutions that prevent political parties from acting on their worst impulses or doing tangible damage to democratic institutions. 

Governments and policymakers concerned about polarization populism should focus on strengthening electoral integrity and public faith in the reliability and impartiality of all parts of the electoral system, from electoral finance to the information ecosystem to the counting of votes. India, which has just concluded national elections, is a good example. In the lead up to the polls, countervailing institutions worked to ensure a more level playing field. At the end of the process, all parties accepted the result. Reinvigorating public faith in the core, participatory institution of democracy that is voting can act as a first step towards a renewed civic faith in democracy and government as the collective, equitable expression of the will of all of a nation’s people. 

The second component is to take seriously the perceptions of citizens who vote for conservative parties with populist inclinations, disentangle fact from fiction, and work to develop policies and political campaigns that address them – without falling into the all-too-common trap of replicating populist positions on issues such as immigration and minority rights and hoping for the best. It must be remembered that populism itself is neither a threat to democracy nor antidemocratic. The danger instead comes from the policies and politics that populist leaders can, at their worst, bring about.

Annex 1. Percentage of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed with a statement. Text is bolded where responses between political parties differ by more than ten percentage points.