Speaking like ordinary people, representing ordinary people? Language styles, populist attitudes, and voters’ evaluations of political candidates

This article examines the influence of political candidates’ language styles on voter evaluations. Drawing on two preregistered survey experiments conducted with nationally representative samples of the U.S. population, I explore how the use of an informal style, often associated with populist communication, affects voter perceptions across both non-populist and populist speeches. I also investigate whether an informal style facilitates connections with specific segments of the electorate, such as individuals holding populist attitudes or with lower levels of education. After listening to a brief audio recording, respondents rated a fictional candidate on attributes such as competence, intelligence, trustworthiness, sympathy, and relatability. They also reported their likelihood of supporting this candidate. The results show that candidates do not generally benefit from adopting a more colloquial way of speaking. When messages are non-populist, language style has little to no effect on voter evaluations. However, in the context of populist rhetoric, an informal style leads to more negative assessments of competence, intelligence, trustworthiness, and sympathy. Contrary to expectations, voters with populist attitudes are no more likely than others to evaluate positively candidates who use an informal style. The same holds for voters who identify with the Republican Party.