Polarisation and Electoral Realignment: The Case of the Right-Wing Parties in Spain

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the consequences of elite polarisation at the mass level. We study the electoral re-alignment within the right-wing Spanish electorate in recent years, whereby support for the long-predominant Partido Popular has been eroded dramatically to the benefit of new challengers. Measuring ideological polarisation at the party system level and at the individual level, we show how the polarising strategy implemented by the liberal Ciudadanos – and imitated by PP – to gain support from the right-wing electorate paved the way for a massive transfer of conservative voters to the radical-right Vox. The results provide counter-intuitive evidence about the electoral effects of elite polarisation: those individuals who perceived party polarisation less tended to vote more for the radical right party, while those who perceived greater polarisation among parties were more likely to vote for moderate forces.

KEYWORDS:

• Partido Popular
• Ciudadanos
• Vox
• de-alignment
• mainstream parties
• radical right
• elections
• party strategies

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the journal’s editors for providing very useful insights on previous versions of this article

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplementary data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/13608746.2021.1901386.

Notes

1. All the data on public opinion in the article come from different opinion polls conducted by the Spanish Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (Centre for Sociological Research, CIS). The data are available in the CIS Data Bank website (www.cis.es).

2. Source: CIS Barometer, May 2019 (E3247).

3. Source: CIS Barometer, December 2019 (E3269).

4. In the months prior to the regional breakthrough of Vox, the immigration crisis had certainly gained momentum after the decision of the Sánchez government to accept the refugees rescued by the Aquarius boat in June 2018. Hence, between June and September, the concern about immigration grew from 3.5 to 15.6 per cent (according to CIS Barometers). It has remained stable since then, fluctuating around 10 per cent. However, these numbers are far from the levels of the previous decade when immigration became a problem for more than 30 per cent of the population, especially between 2005 and 2008.

5. Source: CIS Barometer, December 2018 (E3234) and January 2019 (E3238).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Juan Rodríguez-Teruel

Juan Rodríguez-Teruel is an Associate Professor at the Universitat de València. PhD in Political Science (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), he has been a visiting fellow at the University of Nottingham, University of Leiden and Université Libre de Bruxelles, and a post-doc at at the London School of Economics and the Open University. His research interests focus on political elites and party politics. His most recent publications have appeared in Acta Politica, Comparative European Politics, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. He is one of the founding editors of the Spanish political website ‘Agenda Pública’.