When the Well-Off Feel Left Behind: Income Misperception and Populist Attitudes

Why do materially secure citizens embrace populist attitudes? Research on the populist right has focused primarily on economically vulnerable voters and left-behind places, leaving unclear why support extends to citizens who are objectively well off. We argue that a belief-based source of grievance helps explain this puzzle: citizens may underestimate their relative economic standing and feel deprived despite material security. Using a survey module embedded in the Innovation Sample of the German Socio-Economic Panel, we show that pessimistic income-rank misperceptions predict stronger populist attitudes conditional on actual rank. Instrumental-variable and within-household analyses strengthen a causal interpretation. A preregistered survey experiment randomly provides personalized information about respondents' actual income percentile. The control arm replicates the observational pattern; the treatment corrects beliefs and shifts income satisfaction, but does not reduce populist attitudes. Economic grievance can therefore travel upward through perceived status, while becoming politically resistant once organized by populist narratives.