The electoral impact of the attacks of March 11th in Madrid: explanatory mechanisms

ABSTRACT

The main objective of this work is to analyse the mechanisms through which the attacks occurring on March 11th 2004 in Madrid could have influenced citizen’s vote decisions and hence the results of the legislative elections held three days later in Spain. It is argued that the most probable hypothesis is that the attacks influenced the voting decisions of citizens through a combination of several mechanisms: (1) the indignation caused by the belief that the government had violated a series of moral norms when trying to manipulate information to obtain an electoral benefit and (2) the anger and indignation that arose from attributing the political responsibility for the attacks to the government due to its support of the USA during the Iraq War.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral norms
• emotions
• wishful thinking
• frames

Acknowledgements

This work has benefitted from the comments of Francisco J. León and José A. Noguera, who were kind enough to read an earlier version of the paper. Previous versions of this work were presented at the First Meeting of the International Network of Analytical Sociologists, the 6th Catalan/International Congress of Sociology, the GSADI Plenary Workshop and the meeting of the Working Group on Analytical Sociology of the Spanish Federation of Sociology, as well as in the context of the course on contemporary sociological theory that I teach in the Department of Sociology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, benefitting from the comments received there. The initial idea of writing this paper arose as a result of some talks with my student Jenny Niubó about the hypothetical impact of the March 11th attacks on the 2004 electoral results.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jordi Tena-Sánchez is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a member of the Analytical Sociology and Institutional Design Group (GSADI). His main research interest is in applying the principles of analytical sociology to the study of several aspects of contemporary societies.

Notes

1. This section is necessarily brief. The reader who is unfamiliar with the case and wants a more detailed description of the events can see: Abellán (2005), Alexandre (2004), Artal (2004), Barreiro (2004a), Campo-Vidal (2004), Chari (2004), Colomer (2005), Lago and Montero (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2009), Olmeda (2005), Ordeix (2005), Pacheco (2004), Pallarès et al. (2005), Platón (2005), Porras (2004), Rekalde et al. (2004), Rodríguez (2004), Santamaría (2004), Torcal and Rico (2004) and Zurutuza (2006).

2. Readers can find a more detailed analysis of these and other data in Bali (2007), Berrocal and Fernández (2006), Lago and Montero (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2009), López (2004), Michavila (2005), Montalvo (2011), Pallarès et al. (2005) and Torcal and Rico (2004). The results of these analyses are along the same lines as the arguments in this work.

3. A similar conclusion is reached by Bali (2007).

4. For a relatively similar argument, see Lago and Montero (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2009).

5. Some authors and analysts, for instance Rodríguez (2004), have also suggested the important role of emotions in citizens’ reactions to how the government handled the information.

6. A similar argument is held by Bali (2007).

7. We know that these citizens mobilized because of the attacks, although not all of them may have done so as a result of their anger and indignation towards the government. At least two other processes could be at work. First, as argued by Barreiro (2004a), terrorist attacks (and catastrophes in general) usually give rise to a mobilization effect per se, because citizens see their vote as a way to reaffirm their support for democracy, and express their rejection of the terrorists, among other things. Since most abstainers are left-winged, this process could have benefitted the PSOE. Second, it is also possible that some left-winged potential abstainers mobilized because they suddenly saw that, in contrast to what seemed impossible until that moment, the PP defeat was possible. There are no elements to figure out what percentages of the mobilization are attributable to these hypothetical effects. However, what is evident is that, beyond the concrete quantification, a punishment process existed. Remember that, for instance, 16% of those polled by Demoscopia explicitly claimed that ‘the most decisive factor in my vote was how the government managed the information about the authorship of the attacks’.

8. This idea is also suggested by Pallarès et al. (2005).

9. However, this number could be questioned for the reasons already discussed in note 7. In this case, unlike the other, the hypothetical potential abstainers who decided to vote because they saw that the defeat of the PP was possible did so to prevent it.

10. This has traditionally been the case at least in Spain. Gassebner, Jong-A-Pinb, and Mierauc (2008) provide evidence that, in other cases, terrorist attacks can increase the probability that the incumbent government is replaced.

11. See Colomer (2005) and Ordeix (2005). Without agreeing with the argument, Santamaría (2004) claims that this was the PP’s reasoning and Barreiro (2004a) adds that it was also the reasoning of the PSOE. Lago and Montero (2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2009) claim that the PP not only thought that admitting the jihadist authorship would be harmful to them, but that the ETA authorship would benefit them.

12. This idea is also more or less implicitly contained in the reflections of several analysts. See, for instance, Barreiro (2004a), Noya (2004), Olmeda (2005), Ordaz (2004), Pallarès et al. (2005) or Santamaría (2004).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy (MINECO). R&D&I National Program [grant numbers CSO2012-31401, CSO2015-64740-R].