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Populists believe in the sovereignty of the people. Yet, the people can be construed in ethnic terms or in civic terms. Using a novel wording experiment in Germany (N = 7,034), we examine whether ethnic or civic conceptions of 'the people' affect respondents' adherence to key populist attitude items. 'Volk' in German has an ethno-nationalist connotation and has been used throughout history to signify 'ethnic Germans'. The concept 'Bürger', or citizens, by contrast, lacks an ethnic undercurrent. Similar ethnic connotations of 'the people' are also common in other languages. We find that there are statistically significant differences between items framed in an ethnic and a civic manner – and that this differs per item. This relationship is significantly moderated by respondents' degree of exclusive national identity and voting behaviour for the radical right. Our findings suggest that the way in which the people is conceptualized has important implications for the measurement of populist attitudes. When populist attitudes are measured with an ethnic understanding of the 'the people', the construct is biased towards right-wing populism, inhibiting the measurement of populism as a 'thin ideology'. Moreover, we demonstrate the importance of careful translations in comparative research, since some translated synonyms carry different semantic meanings and thereby change the concept under investigation.