About the Expert Survey

The second round of the expert survey is now available for public use!

The Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey is an endeavor that aims to measure key attributes of political parties in European democracies using expert judgments. Founded by dr. Maurits J. Meijers and dr. Andrej Zaslove in 2017, the expert survey is principally aimed at measuring the degree of populism at the level of the political party. Currently, the team of Principal Investigators consists of dr. Maurits J. Meijers and dr. Andrej Zaslove (both at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and prof. dr. Robert Huber (University of Reading, UK).

The 2018 Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) dataset presents the first round of the expert survey. It measures positions and attitudes of 250 parties on key characteristics related to populism, political style, party ideology, and party organization in 28 European countries. The first round of the expert survey was fielded between April 2018 and July 2018 to 294 country-experts.  The accompanying article was published in Comparative Political Studies. To date, the data has been downloaded ca. 4000 times — demonstrating its contribution to the political science community. The data is publicly available on Harvard Dataverse.

The 2023 Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) dataset presents the second wave of the expert survey. It broadly follows the approach of the 2018 wave. The dataset included both the first and the second wave. It measures positions and attitudes of 312 parties on key characteristics related to populism and party ideology in 31 European countries. Additionally, it introduces new items measuring parties’ positions towards democratic commitment, compromise, and climate change issues, amongst others. The paper introducing the data can be found on the pre-print server The 2023 Populism and Political Parties Expert Survey (POPPA) dataset presents the second wave of the expert survey. It broadly follows the approach of the 2018 wave. It measures positions and attitudes of 312 parties on key characteristics related to populism and party ideology in 31 European countries. Additionally, it introduces new items measuring parties’ positions towards democratic commitment, compromise, and climate change issues, amongst others. The paper introducing the data can be found on the pre-print server SocArXiv. The data is also publicly available on Harvard Dataverse.