How has Covid-19 affected support for populist and mainstream parties in Europe? In a new blog post, I find that the lead governing party received a short-term boost and right-wing populist parties a short-term loss in their polling. 1/4

I interpret this as a short-run 'rally around the flag effect' as opposed to a general 'flight to expertise/professionalism' because other mainstream governing coalition and opposition parties saw little change in their support. Plus, most populists took Covid seriously. 2/4

Now we're almost back to the status quo ex ante. Going forward, populists can benefit from economic fallout, especially from small business owners, manual, and service production workers, who are already disproportionately likely to support them. 3/4

Here's the full piece: https://institute.global/policy/covid-19-and-cultural-populist-parties-western-europe-short-term-cost-long-term-gain. May be of interest to @simonjhix @sarahobolt @NoamGidron @timvlandas @halikiopoulou @ma_giani @JakubWondreys @InstituteGC @PopulismTeam @hadas_aron @EmilyJHolland @MSnegovaya