How Do Populist Voters Rate Their Political Leaders? Comparing Citizen Assessments in Three Jurisdictions

Abstract

Drawing from the field of management studies, we explore how a sample of voters in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom use a leader character framework to judge political leadership. We ask, how do voters actually assess the character of their current leaders? And, in light of the populist zeitgeist, do people who hold a populist attitude differ markedly in how they judge the character of political leaders? Our results show that voters generally consider character important. However, voters who lean toward populism believe character matters less in political leadership than individuals who scored low on the populism indicator. This durable difference merits more exploration in a political context marked by populism. Our findings about the factors that influence vote choice contribute to this conversation and to extant research that reports that some voters pay greater attention to leader characteristics than do others.

On the Intersection of Leadership and Populism in North America and Europe

“…Populists in all three jurisdictions believe that leader character matters much less than in the case of ordinary citizens, who clearly place more value on the importance of leader character. This finding is important for understanding how populist voters generally evaluate politicians, and why they may be drawn to some leaders over others (Seijts & de Clercy, 2020).…”

“…In "How Do Populist Voters Rate Their Political Leaders? Comparing Citizen Assessments in Three Jurisdictions," we set out to explore how a sample of voters in the US, Canada, and the United Kingdom use a leader character framework to assess the character of some contemporary national leaders (Seijts & de Clercy, 2020). In probing whether citizens who lean toward populism view character the same as ordinary voters, we find these groups are quite different.…”

Trust as a mediator of the relationship between character and perceptions of leader effectiveness during the COVID-19 crisis.

“…The response options ranged from not at all (1) to a great extent (5); the midpoint of the scale was somewhat (3). These measures are similar to those used by Seijts and de Clercy (2020); Seijts et al (2018). All items we used in this study are shown in supplemental .…”

“…Values act as deep-seated beliefs people hold about what is morally right or wrong. Character is, in short, a habit of being—a set of observable behaviors—anchored in a set of virtues, personality traits, and values that facilitate human excellence and produce personal and social betterment (Crossan et al, 2017; Seijts & de Clercy, 2020).…”