Well-Being Foundations of Populism in Europe

Models of retrospective voting assume that voters' preferences and choices depend on their subjective well-being, and thus, the belief that a particular candidate if elected, shall implement policies to improve it. We use this framework to address the populist phenomenon in Europe over the last 20 years. We find an inverse relationship between life satisfaction (a proxy for subjective well-being) and both the vote share and self-reported support for populist parties while standard macroeconomic indicators and measures of individual wealth fail to explain each of them. We further explore that relationship concerning the existence of a causal effect. We identify a causal mechanism where subjective well-being only indirectly contributes to the popularity of a populist party through its effect on the general level of political trust, the direct determinant of populist support. In the case of the incumbent, both life satisfaction and political trust directly determine its base of support