Populist politicians’ rhetoric in ‘Private’ communication: Evidence from a citizens’ enquiry experiment in Germany

A content analysis reveals that the populist radical right and left create differing negative narratives about the actual economic situation. While the radical right AfD focuses on blaming government policies with drastic metaphors and insinuating malign ambitions of political elites, the radical left Die Linke criticises the economic elite to profit from economic crises as well as the political elite to play down economic distress. Differences in blame attribution can also be identified in the way both parties criticise official statistics: The AfD accuses the political elites of deliberately manipulating these figures while Die Linke brings forward a more constructive criticism. A quantitative analysis shows that the answers’ tonality as well as the effort put into writing a response does not mirror the parties’ issue positionings. Parliamentarians do not generally take the chance to exploit misinformation that match their positioning in a core issue. Contrary, it is shown that negative tonality and the spread of uncertainty is generally attributed to political communication at the political fringes.