It's the Thought that Counts: Inferred Reasons and Dislike of the Populist Radical Right

Supporters of populist radical right (PRR) parties are disliked far more than supporters of other parties. Only a modest share of this animosity is explained by opposition to PRR policy positions, leading many scholars to attribute the remainder to non-ideological factors. I argue, however, that citizens infer ideology not only from what positions partisans support, but also from why they support them. Across two studies, I show that inferences about the rationales motivating PRR supporters' opposition to immigration help explain the exceptional animosity directed at them. First, using a survey experiment with open-ended responses, I show that immigration proponents attribute different rationales to PRR voters than to mainstream-right voters advocating identical immigration restrictions. Specifically, they associate PRR voters with cultural-threat and security concerns, but mainstream-right voters with integration and economic concerns, and evaluate the former rationales considerably more negatively. Next, I use a conjoint experiment to demonstrate that evaluations of PRR supporters improve substantially when they are assigned the rationales typically associated with mainstream-right voters, while evaluations of mainstream-right supporters deteriorate when they are assigned PRR-associated rationales. Accordingly, much of the PRR's affective penalty can be eliminated simply by manipulating the rationale associated with their opposition to immigration, while leaving the position itself unchanged. These findings challenge the assumption that policy stances are transparent signals of party ideology, which underlies much existing work on the ideological foundations of affective polarization.