How Populists Rally Around the People: Evidence from the Yellow Vests Movement Using an Embedding Regression Model

Abstract This research bridges populism and populist social movement studies to address the question of how left‐ and right‐wing populists unite in a common social movement. Using the novel “à la carte” (ALC) embedding regression model, it analyzes a unique dataset of 5,342 protesters and supporters from the Yellow Vests movement in France, capturing their understandings of the People from responses to open‐ended questions. Findings reveal that while left‐ and right‐wing populists diverge in their understandings of the People, differences are not politically divisive and do not preclude common vocabularies allowing for identification with the movement. This study contributes to the literature by showcasing the innovative application of the embedding regression method to textual data collected during social movements. Whereas research on the subject is predominantly qualitative, this study employs quantitative techniques to demonstrate that identification with the People fosters a unified movement despite divergent political beliefs and contrasting social identity frames.