More of the Same? Measuring Donald Trump's Populism in the 2024 Presidential Campaign

This research analyzes whether Donald Trump increased his populist rhetoric in the 2024 presidential campaign in comparison to 2016. Using a holistic coding rubric, we had three trained coders analyze 25 campaign speeches and 2 debates, using a 0-2 scale and creating sub-scores for anti-elitism and people-centrism. The results show no statistically significant increase in overall populism( 2016 Avg = 0.8 vs. 1.0 Avg in 2024. Trump's rhetoric is consistently "half-populist", reflecting a strong leaning towards anti-elitist speech but weaker or erratic amount of people-centrism. Usually a populist will emphasize the people as the "glorified will" of the country. However, Trump strays from this by usually glorifying himself as the people's "representative". The findings would strongly suggest that Trump has continued on the half-populism trend in 2024 he started in 2016 rather than change. However, this is highly context dependent as his populist rhetoric changes usually between rallies and debates.