Socioeconomic Deprivation and the Support for Populism

While there is evidence suggesting that an unfavorable socioeconomic status does foster voting in favor of populist parties, multiple previous studies agree that cultural or political concerns surpass the explanatory power of economic insecurity. Nonetheless, economic approaches of populist voting should not be discarded.

Next to the substantial investigation on which aspects of socioeconomic hardship increase support for populism, another objective of this thesis is to illustrate the methodological impact on the evidence yielded. In order to achieve that, this thesis consists of four sub-studies, each approaching the research question from another perspective to provide a comprehensive overview on socioeconomic drivers of populist voting.