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Support for populist candidates predicted by declining social capital and an increase in suicides

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Abstract

The recent increase in support for populist candidates in elections across the world has received considerable attention and is of broad scientific and public interest. Two of the most common explanations for this surge are that populism is a consequence of fundamental changes in the workforce stemming from globalization and that it is a cultural backlash to rapid changes in societal values. Here, we test what we call ‘the social isolation hypothesis,’ which hypothesizes that the rise in support for populism is produced by a decline of social capital which increases loneliness and undermines mental health. Using longitudinal census, mortality, and election data, we find that changes in variables related to social isolation—deaths from suicide or alcohol, and an overall decline in social capital—predict support for populist candidates. This supports the idea that the deterioration of the strength of social relationships can affect voting behavior.

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Data availability

The data that were used to generate these results and that support the findings of this study are available on Github.

Code availability

The code used to produce these models, generate all results, and produce all of the figures and tables in this manuscript and the supplementary information is available on Github.

Notes

  1. Although none of the presidential candidates from either major political party were considered to be populist in 2008 or 2012, the popularity of Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin is widely seen as an important early sign that populist candidates were beginning to gain support in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis (Moffitt and Tormey 2014).

  2. Results were similar if parameter estimates were standardized by multiplying them by the standard deviation of their observed range (Cohens d) (Rice and Harris 2005) (see Supplementary materials Table S5)

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mamaroneck High School Open Science Research teachers Guido Garbarino and Alejandro Victoroa for their support and Dave O’Brien and Karthik Panchnathan for helping to edit the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

    R. Lynch

  2. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

    N. Lynch

  3. University of Turku, Turku, Finland

    S. N. Chapman, M. Briga & S. Helle

  4. North Carolina Zoo, Asheboro, NC, USA

    E. Lynch

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  1. R. Lynch
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  2. N. Lynch
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Contributions

RL wrote the first draft of the manuscript, conducted the statistical analysis, and created the figures and tables. NL conceived of the idea, collected the data, and helped write the manuscript. SC, MB, and EL helped to edit the manuscript and SH helped to edit the manuscript and offered statistical guidance.

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Correspondence to R. Lynch.

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All data used in these analyses can be found on a public repository on Github.

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Lynch, R., Lynch, N., Chapman, S.N. et al. Support for populist candidates predicted by declining social capital and an increase in suicides. SN Soc Sci 2, 80 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-022-00373-0

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