Populist attitudes in Australia: contextualising the demand-side

Abstract

The study of populist attitudes is a burgeoning area of scholarship. While the manner in which populism is measured and the concepts underpinning it are continuously updated, much work remains. In this article we consider the way populist attitudes are associated with key issues in Australian politics and the way these issues shape voting behaviour. We demonstrate that populist attitudes are associated with dissatisfaction with the functioning of liberal democracy, as well as negative attitudes towards Indigenous peoples. However, we find it is not strongly associated with economic anxiety. We argue that measuring populist attitudes in isolation from other national level contextual factors is problematic and can lead to flawed assumptions about the drivers of voting behaviour.