Family Resemblances: Remnants of Populism in Portuguese 2017 Regional Elections

Abstract

In September of 2017 during the Portuguese regional elections, the mass media began reporting an emergence of a populist movement or, at least, started to label one of the candidates as a populist leader. To understand this phenomenon and see if significant rhetorical aspects of populism were present in the candidate’s discourse as according to the media, we analyzed the four primary Portuguese newspapers. As a first, exploratory approach to the research question, we developed a quantitative content analysis. We found that the newspapers became resonance boxes, not only of this particular candidate but also from all Western society, underlining some of the main rhetorical aspects of the populist discourse used by the candidate.