Coming from the streets, confronting the elites, or making the right pleas? Studying the drivers of support for movement parties

In this study we are interested in what drives support for movement parties. With this objective, we will employ a choice-based conjoint experimental, where respondents will be asked to make a forced choice between one of two hypothetical candidates for entering the national parliament, placed as part of a nationally representative survey of six countries (Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and the United Kingdom). Candidates’ profiles will contain information about their previous experience in institutional and extra-institutional politics, a statement about their reason for running in the elections used as a proxy for whether candidates utilize a populist rhetoric, as well as policy positions on migration and environmental policies. With this study, we will test to what degree support for movement-parties is driven by their proximity to institutions or the streets, their populist attitudes or their concrete policies. This paper will advance our knowledge about the demand side of the important growth of movement parties across Europe.