Why are populist parties so well received by the voters? Is it the populist political sympathy of the voters or the topic preferences? In their new published paper “Between Thin- and Host-Ideologies: How Populist Attitudes Interact with Policy Preferences in Shaping Voting Behavior” Nicole Loew and Thorsten Faas go into the details of the interaction of these two voting reasons. Based on the voters of “Alternative für Deutschland” and “Die Linke” at the Bundestag elections in 2017 the authors show that populist mindsets can compensate on content absent party convictions and thus they make their choice possible.

Here is the link to the paper in Representation