New annual survey explores attitudes on subjects from food to immigration in 23 countries

The YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project is a new survey conducted annually in 23 of the world’s biggest countries, exploring populism, globalisation and attitudes on topics ranging from food, travel and technology to immigration, cultural beliefs and the environment. The Guardian helped YouGov pollsters and University of Cambridge academics at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy to design the survey, and is exclusively releasing the findings.

Revealed: populists far more likely to believe in conspiracy theories Read more

The 2019 project surveyed 25,325 people in February and March across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. This year’s findings are being published in association with the Guardian’s The new populism series.

Countries/samples

The countries surveyed (and sample sizes) were: France (1,021); Germany (1,497); Italy (1,005); Spain (1,014); Sweden (1,011); Denmark (1,010); Poland (1,019); Britain (1,949); Australia (1,006); US (2,012); Canada (1,006); Japan (1,143); Brazil (1,006); Mexico (1,009); Turkey (506); Egypt (1,537)*; Saudi Arabia (828)*; India (1,035)*; China (1,021)*; Indonesia (1,001)*; Thailand (1,043)*; Nigeria (644)*; and South Africa (1,002).

The surveys were carried out online.

Populist cohort

The Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde defines populism as a thin-centred ideology that separates society into two antagonistic groups – “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite” – and that insists politics should be an expression of the general will of the people. Working with academic advisers, the Guardian used this definition, which is widely used in political science, to identify a cohort of survey respondents with strong populist views.

Q&A What is the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project? Show Hide The project is a new annual survey of global attitudes in 23 of the world's biggest countries, covering almost 5 billion people.

The 2019 survey canvassed 25,325 people online across much of Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia in February and March.

Questions about populist attitudes and convictions were inserted in order to derive a "populist cohort", and discover what this group of people think about major world issues from immigration to vaccination, social media and globalisation. The full methodology can be found here.

This populist cohort included all the respondents who answered “strongly agree” to both of the following statements:

My country is divided between ordinary people and the corrupt elites who exploit them.

The will of the people should be the highest principle in this country’s politics.

China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were not included in the populism analysis because YouGov conducts only certain kinds of research in those countries. Nigeria was excluded over concerns about populism-related data in that country. The populist cohort comprised 22% of respondents across the 19 countries that were analysed.

Analysis

The data was analysed by Guardian journalists in conjunction with YouGov. Additional research exploring the relationship between populist attitudes and conspiracy theories was conducted by Levente Littvay, from Central European University, and Matthijs Rooduijn from the University of Amsterdam.

Models predicting populism and belief in the specific conspiracy theories were fixed effects logistic regressions including controls for country, gender, two polynomials (an expression of more than two algebraic terms) of age (grouped in decades), and urbanicity, measured as city centre or large town, suburb, small town, or settlement.

Democracy question

A question testing democratic preferences asked respondents: “Which one of the following do you think is generally best at producing … i) a strong economy, ii) political stability, and iii) a happy society. The options were:

“An electoral democracy, where decisions are made by national leaders who are chosen by the general public.”

“A direct democracy, where decisions are made by the general public voting directly on issues.”

“A non-democratic system, where decisions are made by national leaders who are not chosen by the general public.”

“It depends. One type of system is not necessarily better than the others at producing a strong economy.”

“Don’t know.”

“None of these.”

For those markets labelled*, the figures have been weighted and are representative of the online adult population aged 18+. For all other markets, the figures have been weighted and are representative of the adult population aged 18+. For combined country samples, each country has been given an even weighting.

