This year there are more than 70 national elections scheduled to take place around the world, including roughly 40 for the executive branch. As this abnormally high number of elections takes place, new public opinion research finds broad-based support for candidates that could usher in a renewed cohort of populist, anti-establishment governments — and potentially, a broader backsliding of democratic norms across the globe. In many ways, this trend is fundamentally driven by economic and social disillusionment and an ongoing collapse of faith in government and the existing economic system. 

To shed light on what’s happening, Clifford Young, president of IPSOS U.S. Public Affairs, will present new results from a survey that has measured the evolution of populist sentiment across 28 countries since 2016. 

Discussant: Jan-Werner Müller, Roger Williams Straus Professor of Social Sciences, professor of politics and founding director of the Project in the History of Political Thought.

SPONSORS 

Princeton Survey Research Center (SRC) 

Center for the Study of Democratic Politics (CSDP) 

School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA)