Populism is declining post-COVID – prefer the latest studies
Foa et al. 22 [Roberto S. Foa is currently the Director of the Centre for the Future of Democracy at the University of Cambridge and an elected Executive Committee member of the World Values Survey. He graduated from the University of Oxford in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (BA), and completed my Ph.D. at the Harvard University Department of Government. Xavier Romero-Vidal is a political scientist studying the evolution of public opinion and political behaviour in a comparative perspective at the University of Cambridge and the University Carlos III Madrid., Andrew J. Klassen is the Principal Researcher for the Human Understanding Measured Across National (HUMAN) Surveys project, which merges, formats, and harmonizes individual level data from multiple cross-national public opinion surveys. Joaquín Fuenzalida Concha is an engineer with an MPP at the University of Oxford and an MSc in Democracy and Comparative Politics at UCL. Marian Quednau is a Research Assistant at the Centre for the Future of Democracy and reading for a PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. He holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology from Erasmus University College Rotterdam. Lisa Sophie Fenner is a PhD student in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at Cambridge University., 01-2022, "The Great Reset: Public Opinion, Populism, and the Pandemic," Centre for the Future of Democracy on, https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The_Great_Reset.pdf]//gbs-aarz
Globally, we find that support for populism has collapsed during the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic. This includes support for populist parties, agreement with populist attitudes, and the approval ratings of individual populist leaders.
On average, populist leaders saw a 10 percentage point drop in their approval ratings from the second quarter of 2020 to the final quarter of this year. Meanwhile, support for key populist attitudes – such as belief in the “will of the people” or that society is divided between ordinary people and a “corrupt elite” – has declined in almost every country.
We suggest three reasons for the collapse of the populist wave.
First, populist leaders have mishandled the coronavirus crisis. On average such leaders are rated worse by their citizens for their management of the pandemic, and are less trusted by their citizens as a source of information about it. Meanwhile, support for anti-establishment outsiders has declined as public trust in government and in experts have recovered.
Second, there is evidence that political polarisation has declined. The experience of facing a common crisis has proven to be a unifying event for citizens in many societies. Just as divided societies provide fertile ground for populists to flourish, it is more difficult for such politicians to mobilise support when inter-group resentments have attenuated.
Third, the pandemic has reduced the economic divide. "Left behind" regions such as the American Midwest, northern England, or southern Italy show the largest declines in support for populist attitudes between 2019 and 2021, and this may reflect differences in regional economic performance during the pandemic.
Overall, we suggest these findings are reassuring for the future of western democracy. Across the world, the populist wave appears to be passing. Some figures, such as Donald Trump, have already left office. Others, including Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Jair Bolsonaro, face a difficult fight for re-election. While support for democracy has weakened and satisfaction with democracy remains fragile, the post-pandemic environment is likely to prove a more difficult environment for populist politicians to mobilise and sustain support.