Hot Populism? Affective Responses to Antiestablishment Rhetoric

Populist rhetoric is often portrayed as deeply emotional, aimed at provoking gut‐level, affective responses. It clearly enthuses some voters, while other voters resent it. Yet we know very little about the responses that populist actually evokes. For whom rhetoric, particularly its antiestablishment component, arousing, and who has positive or negative responses? To analyze this, study to proestablishment rhetoric. We follow circumplex model conceptualize arousal (measured with skin‐conductance levels) valence facial electromyography [fEMG]). use data ( N = 343) collected different sites (a music festival, university lab, a religious gathering, biker museum, fair) our analyses are based on preregistered analysis plan. find no overall differences in versus do find, however, conditional vote choice education level. Specifically, lower educated respond more arousal, those for radical right also valence. These effects only manifest themselves vis‐à‐vis and, hence, suggest an incongruency effect. This raises question of what constitutes counterframe.