How do populist incumbents use strategic communication to survive economic crises? To persuade voters, incumbents generally—and populist incumbents specifically—may
deploy two communication strategies. First, to reduce the salience of their poor economic performance, incumbents can shift the agenda to sociocultural issues. Alternatively, despite presiding over economic crisis, incumbents can employ economic
appeals by emphasizing their economic competence and the opposition’s incompetence. To test the effectiveness of these strategies, we conducted an ethnographically informed survey experiment with 2,400 Turkish citizens before Turkey’s 2023 election,
in which respondents were exposed to rhetoric simulating the incumbent’s campaign messaging about sociocultural or economic issues. Whereas incumbent sociocultural rhetoric had no marginal effect, economic appeals increased respondents’ approval of
the incumbent’s economic management and overall performance. Incumbent appeals about mega-projects and economic nationalism emerge as key mechanisms increasing approval of the incumbent. Surprisingly, incumbent economic appeals were effective even amid economic crisis.