Beginning with the economic crisis in 2008, a number of European societies witnessed the emergence of 'new parties'. Most authors explain their electoral appeal by focusing on how the perceived state of the economy influences individuals' voting decisions. This article determines the extent to which political attitudes can also explain voting for new political parties born in the heat of the economic crisis. Specifically, it explores the link between populist attitudes, in contrast to pluralist and elitist attitudes, and voting for two new political parties in Spain (Ciudadanos; Podemos), which are noticeably different in their ideological positions, programmatic proposals and populist discourses. The results show that stronger populist attitudes increase the likelihood of voting for new parties as dissimilar as Podemos and Ciudadanos. Overall, the findings suggest that voting for new parties cannot be understood as a mere economic response. Rather, political factors, and especially populist attitudes, matter too.

The populist radical-right label brings together parties characterised by their adherence to populism, nativism, and authoritarianism. While the relevance of the label to the family is unquestioned, its popularity, combined with the theoretical affinity between the three core elements, may cause radical-right parties to be systematically considered populist without further examination. This article posits that whether a radical-right party is populist is an open empirical question, and to demonstrate this, we test the importance of populism in the discourse and electoral success of a new radical-right party, Spain’s VOX. Our empirical strategy is based on the holistic grading of core political discourses, and the analysis of innovative survey data that includes populist attitudes and voting intention. Our results indicate that, despite the existence of certain populist elements in both the supply and demand sides of the electoral competition, these should be considered supplemental and subordinate to nationalist and traditionalist elements, which are central to explaining both the discourse and electoral success of VOX. We believe that our findings are a cautionary note against assuming that all radical-right parties are populist, and an invitation to improve empirical techniques able to separate populism, nativism, and authoritarianism in political discourses.

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.

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¿Puede un estudio de partidos populistas en el sur de Europa arrojar luz sobre la relación entre el populismo y el euroescepticismo? Este trabajo comparativo examina los diferentes grados y tipos de euroescepticismo de los partidos populistas en la región sur, ya que esperamos que la naturaleza más variada de los partidos populistas en esta región amplíe el conocimiento sobre las relaciones entre el populismo y el euroescepticismo. En general, nuestro artículo muestra que los partidos populistas de izquierda y derecha comparten lo que inicialmente puede parecer un perfil euroescéptico homogéneo. Sin embargo, un examen más exhaustivo confirma que los partidos populistas de izquierda tienen opiniones más positivas sobre el proceso de integración en los indicadores relacionados con el lado político de la UE (poderes del Parlamento Europeo y proceso de ampliación).