Abstract
Contemporary research classifies populism as a thin-centered ideology, which can be attached to different “host” ideologies. Populist attitudes have been found to predict electoral support for populist candidates in Europe and the Americas, albeit still subsidiary to “thick” ideological issue positions. With the concomitant rise of the radical right, the lingering question is how much do populist attitudes actually matter for voting. We test the effects of populist attitudes and ideology on vote choice in a likely case scenario, the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, using data from the Brazilian Election Study. Support for the far right populist candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, is explained by right-wing ideology and illiberal attitudes, with populist attitudes playing a very small role, if any. These results reinforce the idea that populist attitudes may be no more than a flamboyant but ultimately irrelevant packaging to explain the global rise of the far right.
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