Mid Sweden University

Populism is a term used diligently in today's political and social debate. It is barely possible to read a political news article without revealing the word. The purpose of this exam is to explore what perception and view secondary school students from one theoretically oriented program and from one practically oriented program in Sundsvall have about the term populism.

Our first aim is to define the concept of populism. The history of the concept, why it’s significance has grown so rapidly during the last couple of years and most importantly what the concept really means. We have chosen to use a quantitative questionnaire survey with a strategic and targeted type selection to explore and analyze what views and perceptions secondary school students have about populism as a political concept.

We discovered that secondary school students that claimed they were very or fairly interested in politics and society had relatively good knowledge on the term of populism. While the view and perception of the secondary school students that claimed they were very or fairly uninterested in politics and society did not correspond at all with earlier researchers definition of the term. Furthermore, we also learned that there is a broader perception in Europe and the Western world that populism is automatically connected to right wing politics, while in Latin America there is a view of populism as something automatically connected to left wing politics. That can be described as one of the reasons why an overwhelmingly majority of the secondary school students in our examination had the perception of populism as something connected to right wing politics.