Populistische Demokratiekonzeptionen und die Wahl der AfD: Evidenz aus einer Panelstudie

This contribution studiestheeffect of populist conceptions of democracy on voting for populist parties drawing on the case of the “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD). Building on dominant definitions of populism, we conceptualize a populist orientation towards democracy via three elements—the privilege of the majority will over minority rights, the demand for absolute responsiveness from representatives to the majority will and negative views of political pluralism—and propose a corresponding measurement model. Our empirical analysis shows that such populist conceptions of democracy are particularly strong among AfD supporters. Moreover, they exhibit significant and substantial effect on voting intentions for the AfD in multivariate analyses and, leveraging the panel structure of the data, are abletopredict changes in party preferencestowards the AfD over time.