Meanwhile, the only country to score lower than Germany among the 12 European nations surveyed was Lithuania, a small Baltic state with a population of less than 3 million. Almost no Lithuanians were found to have authoritarian populist leanings by YouGov.

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The YouGov survey comes at a fraught time for German politics. Angela Merkel, Germany's long-standing conservative leader now considered an unlikely stalwart for liberalism in the West, announced on Sunday that she intended to run again for chancellor in next year's federal elections. Her coalition of centrist parties is expected to face a considerable challenge from an upstart party, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), that won a number of key victories in local elections last year.

Merkel's reelection bid also comes as President Obama, a key ally, ends his time in the White House to be replaced by President-elect Donald Trump — an unlikely president seen by many as a key example of an authoritarian populist candidate. Trump's November election win came after Britain's vote to leave the European Union and ahead of next year's French election, where the far right National Front candidate Marine Le Pen is widely expected to do well.

The German chancellor, in office since 2005, seemed aware of her unusual position in the changing international landscape, suggesting on Sunday that no other candidate could cope with the “insecure times.”

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YouGov's ongoing study of populist authoritarianism was devised with Britain’s Regius Professor of Political Science, David Sanders from the University of Essex, to look specifically at four theoretical foundations of authoritarian populism — anti-human rights, anti-E.U., anti-immigrant, pro-strong foreign policy. More than 12,000 people have been polled in relation to the study. YouGov says that its data shows how appealing to authoritarian populism ideals can be a successful strategy across much of the world.

“Should a politician, political party or movement be able to find a way to unite significant numbers of [authoritarian populism] voters under their banner, they will be able to issue a serious challenge to the established political order,” Joe Twyman, YouGov's head of political and social research, told WorldViews in an emailed statement. “This data suggests there is a very real chance that the rise of authoritarian populism could be the defining political phenomenon of the next decade, and not just in Europe, but across developed democracies — and 2016 could be only the beginning.”

German newspaper Die Welt, surveying the YouGov data in an article published on Monday, noted that Spain was another country that shared Germany's resistance to authoritarian populism — possibly because of the countries' shared experience of authoritarian rule in the 20th century. Spain's low support suggested “that this trend is due to the recent history of the two countries,” Twyman told Die Welt.

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Die Welt reported that unlike in some other nations, support for authoritarian populism in Germany was confined to the right wing of the political spectrum. YouGov's data showed that political movements like AfD tended to have more support among older Germans and those with an average level of education, Die Welt noted, and far more support from men than from women.

Recent polling conducted by INSA and YouGov has found the AfD has around 14.5 percent support in Germany, making it the third largest political force after Merkel's Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union conservative bloc and the liberal Social Democrats.