A Socio-Cultural Reconceptualization and Operationalization of Populist Attitudes: The United States Case Study

Populist attitudes questionnaires, developed for measurement of global electorate, assess the degree of support for populism as a thin ideology while disregard individuals' subjectivity when faced with linguistic markers that pit the people against politicians across different socio-cultural contexts. We argue that populist attitudes reflect subjectivity only when reconceptualized as long-sedimented positions within populist discourse and measured through symbolical community membership.This study showcases the world's most prominent populist symbolical communities, United States’ left and right populism, using 2020 data from 7,320 participants in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) module 5. We refined the populist attitudes questionnaire by adding other items with linguistic markers central to US populism. Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) and Response Item Networks (resIN) revealed that high scores on populist attitudes scales indeed indicate membership in two qualitatively distinct symbolic communities, each rooted in different socio-structural positions, electoral behaviours, and normative stances on government, and not unique populist ideology.