Support for a right-wing populist party and subjective well-being: Experimental and survey evidence from Germany

Maja Adena and Steffen Huck

PLOS ONE, 2024, vol. 19, issue 6, 1-16

Abstract: With the rise of populism in many countries, including Germany, it is more important than ever to better understand the causes and consequences of populist support. Using two experiments within the context of a large panel survey, we study how support for the German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is associated with subjective perceptions of personal and financial well-being. In both experiments, we rely on priming the identity of AfD supporters, once in a controlled manner and once in a natural setting. We document a causal relationship from AfD support to diminished well-being for new and marginal AfD supporters. Our findings challenge the prevailing assumption that causality moves unidirectionally, from life dissatisfaction to support for populist parties, and suggest that early interventions focusing on positive messages are particularly promising to win voters back into the mainstream.

Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0303133 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 03133&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Support for a right-wing populist party and subjective well-being: Experimental and survey evidence from Germany (2024)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0303133

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303133

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().