Populist Attitudes, Ideology, and Climate Change Beliefs: A Comparative Analysis of Six European Countries

Ideology is the standard explanation for who accepts that climate change is caused by human activity, and populism has recently been added to the account. What remains unclear is how the two work together. We ask whether the association between populist attitudes and belief in anthropogenic climate change is the same across the ideological spectrum, drawing on an original comparative survey of about 15,000 respondents fielded after the 2024 European elections in Italy, France, Poland, Germany, Spain, and Sweden.

Right-wing identification is associated with substantially lower belief in anthropogenic climate change, as expected. Populist attitudes are associated with lower belief too, and across the whole ideological spectrum, so populism does not work here as a proxy for right-wing identification. The association is strongest among left-wing respondents, for whom populist attitudes pull belief down from a high baseline.

The pattern varies across countries. Germany and Sweden display the strongest associations, consistent with climate being a more politicised issue in those two contexts. Where the issue has been drawn into partisan conflict, populist attitudes come bundled with a position on climate science.

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