Authoritarian successor parties emerge in an authoritarian regime and operate during democracy. This paper shows that subjective polarization is related to the fate of authoritarian successor parties in democracy. Using a new dataset comprising 2 million voters' perceptions of 1000 political parties in several new democratic countries, I show that authoritarian successor parties are consistently perceived as more extreme on the left-right dimension from what their policy positions are. Further analyses show that parties led by a former authoritarian elite or the children of a former authoritarian elite have an extremism premium. This is robust when using expert placements, party manifestos, and comparisons within the same party family. A regression discontinuity analysis shows that this bias is stronger for those eligible to vote in the first democratic elections and saw the party operating during both regimes. Last, I study the Brazilian case, where several authoritarian politicians ended up in different political parties, to show that voters from the constituency where they were chosen during the dictatorship have a more biased perception of these political parties. The findings have relevant consequences in understanding polarization in countries with authoritarian pasts.