The Relationship between Populism and Antisemitism: New Evidence from Wisconsin

• In Event: Religion and Populism (Co-sponsored by Political Sociology Section)

Abstract

There is surprisingly little empirical research in English that examines the relationship between populism and antisemitism in the United States or elsewhere. This paper investigates the relationship between populist and antisemitic attitudes in Wisconsin, using data collected in summer 2025 by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center from a representative, probability-based, online panel of Wisconsin adults. Wisconsin is a good case study because both populism and antisemitism have made inroads in the state in the last decade, and Wisconsin is a closely divided swing state that has played an important role in US presidential elections since 2016. We use survey questions that have been previously asked and validated elsewhere. A scale developed by Castanho Silva et al. (2018) is used to measure populism, and the Generalised Antisemitism Scale developed by Allington et al. (2022) is used to measure antisemitism. The paper hypothesizes that populist orientations are related to antisemitic views even when controlling for other relevant variables, including sociodemographic characteristics, partisanship, and left-right self-placement. The paper presents and discusses the survey findings, and it discusses their wider implications for current discussions of populism and antisemitism.

Authors

• Chad Alan Goldberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Anna Milewski, University of Wisconsin-Madison