The level of support for democracy among far right and, especially, populist citizens has consistently been found to be very high in the sense that they prefer to live in some form of democracy. This is puzzling as the political actors these citizens support often behave in ways that counter the very principles of established democracies. While social desirability effects and alternative understandings of 'democracy' have been discussed as potential explanations, another potential way is to consider the alternatives to democracy in a systematic way. While some studies have asked citizens about the desirability of non-democratic alternatives, these questions are often open to interpretation about their level of 'non-democraticness' and asked in parallel to the desirability of democracy. In contrast, this study builds on innovative surveys fielded in the Netherlands and the UK that explicitly contrasts democratic and non-democratic alternatives. These survey items make respondents choose between a democratic and undemocratic version of elections, representation and accountability where the undemocratic version is presented clearly undemocratic but attractive (e.g. 'my party always wins the elections'). The findings of this paper will give us new insights into the support for democracy as a principle in the general population and, in particular, among radical and populist citizens.