Populism for the ambivalent: anti-polarization and support for Ukraine’s Sluha Narodu party

Volodymyr Zelensky and his party Sluha Narodu won Ukraine’s 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections after espousing populist rhetoric. Yet their brand of populism diverged from the far left, the far right, and the center. We propose that Zelensky and Sluha Narodu campaigned as “anti-polarization” populists, drawing on opposition to pre-existing polarization in the Ukrainian political establishment while capitalizing on weak party identification among Ukrainian voters. We utilize electoral results, data from a survey carried out immediately prior to the 2019 parliamentary elections, and interviews to identify Sluha Narodu’s sources of support. We find Sluha Narodu’s supporters were more likely to hold moderately strong or neutral opinions on key issues in Ukrainian politics and to mix both the Russian and Ukrainian languages in their daily lives. Interviews suggest these voters valued character in choosing Sluha Narodu over what were conventionally understood to be salient issues in Ukrainian politics.