How to break populist parties’ appeal? An experimental evaluation of communication counter-strategies

Right-wing populists are on the rise all over Europe. How can mainstream parties effectively counter right-wing populist parties? While prior research has predominantly studied the drivers of populist support, little is known about how to effectively counter populists. We test the effect of four communication strategies to populist rhetoric: Highlighting the role of mainstream parties in representing citizen interests, emphasizing the performance of mainstream parties, revealing the self-interest of populists and appealing to alternative identities. We test the effect of these strategies through a large-scale survey experiment that we fielded among more than 24,000 respondents in Germany by relying on real-world messages of mainstream parties identified in social media, manifestos and press releases of political parties. Overall, the results show that exposing populist parties as self-serving is an effective counter strategy for mainstream parties, particularly among voters who initially showed high support for right-wing populists