Populism and Political Knowledge: The United States in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This article addresses the link between political knowledge and populist attitudes in the United States (US) in comparative perspective. At the beginning of the new decade, populism in the US is associated with support for the Republican party and Donald Trump in particular, and that is how I address it here. Using secondary data from a number of related studies, we find that, overall, support for Trump is not only negatively related to political knowledge, but also to other factors that make his supporters unaware of their being misinformed. This is because, more than for others, partisan cues serve them as a basis for their factual beliefs about political actors and events and assessments of the beliefs of others. While political knowledge has long been comparatively low in the US, as I show in the early part of the article, the relationship between misinformation and populism (i.e., support for Trump) is seen as a new and especially worrisome element. In the concluding section I address what, if anything, could be done to address this situation.

Hot Populism? Affective Responses to Antiestablishment Rhetoric

“…We know, for example, that the effect of populist messages on several types of attitudes are moderated by whether or not someone supports a populist party (Rooduijn et al, 2017). Fourth, as populism has often been linked to education and political sophistication, that is, people with lower levels of education and sophistication being more likely to be populist (Elchardus & Spruyt, 2016; Milner, 2020; Spruyt et al, 2016), we expect that educational attainment and political sophistication are moderators too.…”

Ideología política, populismo, alfabetización informacional y pensamiento crítico: desafíos para el futuro profesorado

“…Sin embargo, el populismo no tiene un efecto significativo sobre la APC. Este dato podría explicarse por el hecho de que los partidarios de formaciones políticas populistas no suelen darse cuenta de que están mal informados (Milner, 2020). También se ha detectado en la presente investigación, un efecto poco potente del nivel de populismo de los participantes sobre su capacidad de detección de noticias falsas, siendo, aun así, más proclives a su detección las personas de ideología no populista.…”

“…El populismo, por tanto, comparte rasgos de la denominada posverdad, y en este sentido, hay autores que subrayan la relación del populismo con la desinformación (Milner, 2020) y el incremento del infoentretenimento (Berrocal Gonzalo, 2014). La posverdad se define como "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion compared to appeals to emotion and personal beliefs" (Flood, 2016).…”

Political knowledge, media use and right-wing populist preferences

“…It has been shown that voters with low political knowledge had significantly more sympathy for Trump, relied more heavily on their emotions, and were thus more trustful about statements made by Trump (Fording/Schram 2017). Trump supporters were also less aware of being misinformed and generally knew less about policies and politics (Milner 2020).…”