Since the turn of the century, electoral volatility has increased in many developed democracies, especially since the Great Depression, which have witnessed the rise of new, radical and populist parties. In order to contribute to the research on this topic, in this panel we place our focus on populist parties in Europe using a comparative perspective. Our focus is on the demand side, hence, on the factors that account for the varying degrees of citizen support for those parties. Our aim is to dig further on the explanations on the success of populist parties in Europe, both East and West, taking into account the sociodemographic characteristics of their electoral base, their attitudes and values, as well as the context in which the electoral contests take place. This means that the panel is conformed by papers dealing with individual-level explanatory factors and papers that consider the combination of micro and macro level factors.