Left and right in the age of populism: has the populist zeitgeist permeated citizens’ representation of ideological labels?

This article explores whether the current populist zeitgeist has changed the social representation of the political labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ in terms of their relevance, understanding and meaning. We merged two post-electoral quota samples of the Italian adult population. The first (N = 1,377) was collected in 2006 by the ITANES research group, the second in 2019 (N = 1,504) for this study. We analysed the relevance of left and right in politics as the frequency with which participants placed themselves on the left–right axis; its understanding as the frequency with which participants answered at least one of two open-ended questions about the meaning of such categories, and the meaning participants gave to left and right in politics through content analysis of their responses to the open-ended questions above. From 2006 to 2019, the relevance and understanding of left and right declined. In terms of meanings, references to the traditional elements of left and right became less common, while references to specific leaders, and the notion of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics no longer making sense, became more widespread; moreover, none of the other populist categories significantly changed their frequency. This study expands the scope of the previous research on this topic also by identifying the critical role that political interest plays in the changes on which we have focused. Strengths, limitations and implications of the study are discussed.