The influence of life transitions on populist attitudes

While most research agrees that the young are more likely to develop populist interests, the elderly are less sensitive to the populist phenomenon (Anja Neundorf & Sergi Pardos-Prado 2022.; Heiss & Matthes, 2017; Körner et al., 2023). However, existing research focusing on the impact of age on populism has neglected the study of how life transitions affect the development and change of populist attitudes. This paper aims to fill this gap by bringing forth explanations based on life transitions, a term that refers to changes in status in the life cycle that are discrete and bounded in duration, although their consequences may be long-term (George, 1993). Life transitions are not entirely alien to the study of populism, although most research has only considered the economic verge of this phenomenon (Davou & Demertzis, 2014; Kriesi & Pappas, 2015; Zagórski et al., 2021), and usually without adopting a dynamic or longitudinal perspective. Other recent theories about life transitions and their relationship with other factors such as voter turnouts or shifts in other political attitudes are considered in this paper to give a wider perspective. As is the case of marriage and divorce (Bellettini et al., 2023; Dehdari et al., 2022), young people moving out from their parents’ house (Bhatti & Hansen, 2012) or retirement (Rapeli et al., 2023). This paper develops a novel theoretical framework by proposing a distinction between economic and sociodemographic transitions and how each of these may affect populist attitudes. Specifically, the paper analyses multiple manifestations of these life transitions (receiving a subsidy, having a child, getting divorced, and leaving the nest among others) and how they affect populist attitudes. For this purpose, the paper draws on panel data collected in Spain between 2019 and 2023. Fixed-effect models reveal that sociodemographic transitions (e.g. having a child or taking care of an old person) are more relevant for the development and change of populist attitudes than economic ones.