A Tale of Populism? The Determinants of Voting for Left-Wing Populist Parties in Spain1

Abstract

Evidence indicates that populist attitudes matter for voting decisions, but findings are still inconclusive about whether this happens regardless of individuals’ positioning on more traditional dimensions of electoral competition. This article focuses on the probability of voting for populist parties in Spain, a country where only left-wing populist parties existed in 2015–2016. Therefore, not all populist individuals, who were spread across the left–right axis, had a natural voting option that combined their populist and left–right preferences. Although this situation could make it more likely that stronger populist attitudes increase likelihood of voting populist regardless of preferences on other political dimensions, the results of this analysis show otherwise. Stronger populist attitudes significantly increase the likelihood of voting for left-wing populist parties only among individuals located in the left side of the ideological axis. The effect seems largely influenced by preferences related to economic redistribution.