Inviting the Populists to the Party: Populist Appeals in Presidential Primaries

The aftermath of the 2016 election cycle ignited significant interest in populism among scholars of American politics, yet relatively little engagement has gone toward how American political elites and institutions respond to populist insurgencies. This is problematic as the response a populist insurgency receives likely affects its degree of success, thereby conditioning the substantive importance of rising populism. This paper addresses this shortcoming by articulating an audition and assimilation theory of party response to populist insurgencies. This theory predicts that parties, presented with an electorally viable populist insurgency in a presidential primary contest, can choose to assimilate the message while removing the populist content to diffuse the insurgent nature. In contrast, an electorally unviable populist insurgency is treated as a failed audition, warranting no response. Using a corpus of presidential primary candidate speeches, I show that party nominees assimilate the topics used by populists who demonstrate electoral viability but do not become more populist themselves. This assimilation is also found among party platforms. Furthermore, assimilation is only performed by the Democratic party and exceeds assimilation of topics used by electorally viable, non-populist rivals.