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European support for populist beliefs falls,
YouGov survey suggests
Survey showed a decline in populist tendencies during
2020 in all eight European countries surveyed
Jon Henley
and Pamela Duncan
Mon 26 Oct
2020 12.08 GMTLast modified on Tue 27 Oct 2020 10.07 GMT
Support for
populist beliefs in Europe has fallen markedly over the past year, a major
YouGov survey suggests, with significantly fewer people across a range of
countries likely to agree with key statements designed to measure it.
The
YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, a survey of about 26,000 people in 25
countries designed with the Guardian, showed a more or less steep decline in
populist tendencies in 2020 in all eight of the European countries also
surveyed last year.
Political
scientists expressed surprise at the size of the fall but said since the main
reasons for it were most likely related to the coronavirus pandemic, support
for populist beliefs could recover as the focus of the crisis becomes more
economic.
“You could
think of the virus like a volcano,” said Matthijs Rooduijn, a political
sociologist at the University of Amsterdam and expert on populism. “It has hit
populism hard, but it will leave behind fertile ground for the future.”
Populism,
which frames politics as a battle between ordinary people and corrupt elites,
has grown rapidly as a political force, with support for populist parties in
national elections across Europe surging from 7% to more than 25% in 20 years.
Populist
leaders mainly on the far right – Italy’s Matteo Salvini, France’s Marine Le
Pen, Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Sweden’s Jimmie Åkesson – have surged and
populist parties have entered government in nearly a dozen European countries.
The survey,
carried out in July and August, found that across Britain, Denmark, France,
Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden – and in Australia, Canada and the US
as well – fewer people agreed with the statement that “the power of a few
special interests prevents our country from making progress”.
In some
countries the fall was substantial: from 33% to 22% in Denmark, a fall of 11
percentage points, with falls of 9 points in Great Britain, 9 points in
Germany, 8 in France, 6 in Italy and 4 in Poland.
The survey
showed similar marked declines in support for other statements designed to
measure support for populist beliefs – including falls of 20 percentage points
in Denmark and 15 in Germany for the view that “a lot of important information
is deliberately concealed from the public out of self-interest”.
Significant
drop-offs were also seen in support for the view that “my country is divided by
ordinary people and the corrupt elites who exploit them”: 11 points in Denmark,
9 points in Germany, 7 in Italy and 5 points in France.
The survey
found a smaller decline in support for the statement “the will of the people
should be the highest principle of this country’s politics”– down by 3points in
Germany, 2 in Italy and 8 in Poland.
But levels
of support for this and other populist views nonetheless remain high in several
countries: in seven of the eight European countries surveyed, between 60% and
74% of respondents said they agreed that the “will of the people” should
prevail.
Sizeable
differences also remain between individual countries. Fifty-six per cent of
respondents in France and 66% in Spain, for example, agreed their country was
split between ordinary people and a corrupt elite, against 34% and 18% in
Sweden and Denmark.
Rooduijn
said the survey’s results mirrored opinion polling on support for populist
radical right parties over the past few months. He saw several main reasons for
the fall in support for populist ideas, all tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
“There is evidence
of greater trust in science, politicians and experts – an impression that only
they can help us,” he said. “A perception, maybe, that a global health crisis
is not a situation where we necessarily want to give power back to the people.”
Populist parties
in many countries have also suffered from a “rally round the flag” effect that
has boosted support for governments, he said, while their popularity has been
dented by their inability to maintain a consistent line on how to handle the
virus, flip-flopping on issues like border closures and lockdowns.
Finally,
Rooduijn said, the scale of the crisis had meant that populist parties and
their ideas simply got far less attention, particularly in the early stages of
the crisis.
He warned,
however, that this was likely only to be a temporary lull. “Things are already
changing quite rapidly with the second wave,” Rooduijn said. “Conspiracy
theories are rising; populations are becoming increasingly polarised over the
measures governments are taking.
“That’s an
opportunity for populists. Several populist radical right parties already seem
to be recovering in the polls.”
The survey
showed significantly less movement among respondents in the US, where the
declines ranged from 2 percentage points to 4 , with only one question (“The
people I disagree with politically are just misinformed”) eliciting more
agreement this year at 38%, up five points on 2019.
The survey
found that while people had generally moved away from the belief that the costs
of immigration outweigh the benefits, attitudes to immigration – a key policy
question for all European far-right populist parties – had hardened over the past
year.
Across the
US, Canada, Australia and five EU countries, the proportion of people agreeing
that “the costs of immigration outweigh the benefits” for their country fell in
2020 compared with last year – by seven percentage points in France and Italy,
and five in Germany.
However,
asked about future immigration into their respective countries, larger
proportions of respondents in seven of the eight European countries surveyed
said immigration numbers should be cut: in France, 51% of respondents said
immigration should be reduced in future, compared with 36% in 2019.
Anti-immigration
sentiment remained most consistently strong in Sweden, where 65% of respondents
said fewer immigrants should be allowed into the country in future, up from 58%
last year. The figures were similar in Italy, where 64% of those surveyed agreed
immigration should be cut, against 53% last year.
The country
with by far the strongest anti-immigration feelings was Greece, included in the
survey for the first time in 2020. Nearly four out of every five respondents
wanted immigration reduced, with 62% saying it should be reduced by “a lot”.
Among the
European countries surveyed, only Poland bucked this trend with 32% of people
saying immigration should be reduced in future compared with 37% in 2019.
Rooduijn
said he suspected there could have been a “Covidisation” of immigration
attitudes too, prompted by people’s lockdown experiences and their fears about
the consequences of future immigration on public health risks and systems.
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