Publication details

Fear, Anger, Hope, and Pride : Negative and Positive Emotions in Electoral Behaviour

Authors

SAXONBERG Steven GYÁRFÁŠOVÁ Oľga FRIČ Pavol

Year of publication 2023
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Sociológia
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Web article - open access
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.31577/sociologia.2023.55.2.5
Keywords Emotions; voting; populism; political parties; leaders
Attached files
Description It is becoming increasingly clear that emotions play a crucial role in voting decisions. This is especially true when it comes to choosing populist parties. This article uses a unique dataset to analyse the interplay between emotions and support for various types of populist parties in Slovakia. It contributes to the discourse by testing the competing hypotheses on what kinds of emotions matter in a post-communist country with multiple types of populist parties. Our results show that although previous studies have tended to concentrate on emotions toward the political or economic situation, feelings toward political leaders actually have greater importance, at least in the Slovak, post-communist context. Our study also indicates that the types of emotions differ depending on whether the populist party has already been in power or not. Contrary to expectations, fear has played a more important role than anger and in general, emotions are more important for rightwing and leftwing populist parties than for non-populist or centrist populist parties.

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