Populism, PiS, and Poland: Multivariate Analysis of Populist Voting
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Date
2020-12
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Recent years have seen a global surge in populism, with populist politicians rising to power in countries as diverse as the United States, Brazil, and the Philippines. Often, populism is seen as a shocking and negative political development. In order to better explain this important political phenomenon, this paper examines determinants of populist voting in Poland. Poland serves as a good test case due to the salience of populism in the Polish political context, and the representativeness of its ruling populist party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS). Informed by past literature, this paper posits six hypotheses linking recent economic marginalization, holding traditional values, being male, anti-immigrant attitudes, political distrust, and Euroscepticism with populist right voting. In order to test these hypotheses, data from the Polish Panel Survey (POLPAN) is utilized. POLPAN, conducted twice a decade since 1988, takes a biographical and longitudinal look into a large representative sample of adult Poles. This paper uses the 2013 and 2018 waves. Multivariate analyses supported five of the six hypotheses. Recent economic marginalization, being male, anti-immigrant attitudes, political distrust, and Euroscepticism were all significantly associated with populist right voting. Political distrust lost its significance when additional variables were added to the model and was thus rejected. Additionally, all four of the additional variables – age (decreasing), education (decreasing), locality size (decreasing), and religiosity – were significantly associated with populist right voting. Future researchers should utilize a better operationalization of anti-immigrant attitudes and use the next wave of POLPAN (2023) to see if results hold. Overall, by showing a link between nine variables and populist right voting in the useful case of Poland, it is hoped that this paper helps lead to a better understanding of populism.
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Keywords
Populism, Populist Radical Right, Central and Eastern Europe, Voting, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość