POPULISM
60 years of campaign speeches reveal why we’ll hear more divisive rhetoric in 2024
Analysis of over 4,000 speeches show trailing presidential candidates often use risky and polarizing populist rhetoric to turn the tide in their favor
In recent decades, there’s been a surge in populism globally, with an increasing number of populist parties and candidates winning over voters.
The US is no exception to this trend.
In fact, politicians from both major parties have historically employed populist rhetoric in their campaigns. From George McGovern and Barack Obama to Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, many old and new presidential candidates have used populist rhetoric to mobilize voters and gain support by appealing to the common people and proclaiming opposition to the corrupt elites or immigrant outsiders. But if such rhetoric is so effective, why not all politicians use populism all the time? More generally, when do politicians strategically decide to use populist rhetoric?
In our recent journal article in Political Communication with my colleague Yaoyao Dai, we shed light on these questions by analyzing a comprehensive collection of over 4,000 speeches from all U.S. presidential campaigns from 1952–2016.
In our research, we were motivated by the increasing prevalence of populist rhetoric in political campaigns and the need to understand its strategic use. We argue that populist rhetoric, while potentially polarizing, can be used as a gamble by politicians with lower popular support to increase their odds of victory. We then use a novel computational method and a language model to measure the use of populism in each speech, as well as examine how it relates to the candidates’ ideological positions and electoral performance.
Our theory merges the ideational understanding of populism with the game-theoretic approach to the study of two-candidate elections using mathematical models. According to this common understanding, populism is a set of ideas that split society into two opposing groups — the “good” people and the “corrupt” elites, and that emphasize that politics should reflect the general will of the people. Importantly, unlike traditional ideologies like socialism or nationalism, populism doesn’t stipulate a specific set of policies. So, it always has to be combined with other policy positions from both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
Here is what we found — less popular candidates are more populist
First, we calculated the proportion of populist rhetoric across all parts of presidential speeches and grouped it by campaign. As shown in the figure below, our large-scale computational approach allows us to offer the first comprehensive analysis of populism across all campaigns. It confirms the unprecedented use of populist rhetoric by Donald Trump in the 2016 elections, appearing in one out of every four of his speeches.
Perhaps more surprisingly to many political analysts, our approach also reveals that Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign has been the second most populist campaign in recent US history, containing elements of populist rhetoric in about 8% of his speeches. However, once in office, Obama tuned down the populist rhetoric significantly in his second campaign. In other words, we find that populist rhetoric is not a fixed trait of certain politicians, but rather a strategic choice that varies depending on the electoral context.
Consistent with our theoretical model, our results reveal a consistent pattern of greater use of populist rhetoric among presidential candidates with lower polling numbers in elections. As can be seen in the figure below, those with less electoral advantage are more likely to employ such rhetoric. These findings hold regardless of candidates’ party affiliation or incumbency status.
The results imply that populism can be fruitfully viewed as a campaign gamble and that the decision to use populist rhetoric is often a calculated risk. That is, populism can help candidates attract attention and gain votes by appealing to a certain segment of voters who feel disenfranchised or ignored by the political establishment. But it can also backfire by alienating liberal democrats or even moderates those who reject such divisive rhetoric.
What does this mean for the upcoming presidential elections?
Our findings are also relevant for understanding the possible use of populist and other divisive rhetoric among presidential candidates in the upcoming 2024 elections and beyond. The election cycle has already kicked off, with President Joe Biden running for re-election in his likely re-match with Donald Trump who is currently leading the GOP nomination in early polls. If Biden and Trump are indeed the eventual nominees, we should expect a much greater use of populist rhetoric from the latter candidate as before.
The former President Donald Trump, who leads the Republican field in early polls, has been known for his populist rhetoric that appeals to his base of loyal supporters and attacks his opponents as corrupt elites or globalists. He has also widely used populist rhetoric to claim that he won the 2020 election despite losing both the popular vote and the electoral college to Biden.
At the same time, President Joe Biden has been expectedly much more reluctant to resort to populism as a leading candidate. Instead, he often contrasts his moderate and responsible leadership style with that of Trump. Still, similar to his democratic predecessor Barack Obama, Biden is not devoid of populism or at least some of its elements. For example, he used populist rhetoric to promote his agenda of “Building Back Better” after the pandemic, as well as introduced a variety of populist-adjacent, nationalist policies such as “Buy America.”
But Biden and Trump aside, the 2024 contest promises to have a crowded, populist-ridden field. Several other candidates from both parties have already declared their intention to run. Among them, we can already hear a lot of populist rhetoric, especially from all those main challengers who are trailing behind in the polls and facing fierce competition.
Most prominently, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is seen as Trump’s strongest challenger for the GOP nomination, has frequently used populist rhetoric to criticize the Biden administration’s policies on Covid-19, education, and immigration. Although analysts are skeptical that DeSantis can “out-populist” Trump, we should expect to see even more of his attempts at using divisive rhetoric as the election approaches.
On the other side, Biden faces some long-shot challengers from within his own party, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, who is increasingly known for his vaccine skepticism. On his campaign trail, RFK Jr. often uses left-wing populist rhetoric to criticize many of Biden’s policies as corrupt, elitist, and harmful to the people.
We should pay close attention to how these and other candidates could use populist rhetoric in their campaigns and how voters would respond to it. Populism can be a powerful tool for mobilizing support, but it can also have negative consequences for candidates themselves and the liberal democratic discourse more broadly. As the 2024 presidential elections approach, we should be aware that even otherwise responsible politicians committed to liberal democracy may decide to use divisive populist rhetoric in a gamble to have at least some chance of winning.
