What role does populist rhetoric play in explaining the recent successes of populist candidates? Pundits and scholars alike have been speculating frequently that the populist argumentative style could affect voters’ preferences and thus affect populist candidates’ successes. However, there is surprisingly little research that systematically scrutinizes this widely held assumption. To fill this gap, this survey experiment focuses on the effects of populist arguments by various political candidates in communicating their positions on a variety of political issues. We argue that populist arguments could affect candidates’ electoral fortunes through two channels: First, directly by changing voters’ evaluations of the candidate, and second, indirectly by changing voters’ positions on an issue, which may have long-term consequences for electoral competition. We explore these two potential routes with a single-profile vignette survey experiment (before / after design) on a nationally representative sample of voters in the UK. By differentiating these two dimensions of populist appeal we make two significant contributions. First, to the literature on populism which, thus far, has an insufficient understanding of how populist rhetoric works. And, second, to the literature that investigates the efficacy of different communication strategies to which we add a new dimension: the effects of different rhetorical strategies on the evaluation of the respective candidate.