A significant number of European electors are turning their backs on traditional main-stream parties. European party systems are being challenged by an increasing number of (new) radical parties, which defied the Christian-social democrat alternation that has dominated Western European countries for decades. In Spain, a political earthquake started after the 2014 European Parliament election. In the context of the worst global economic crisis in the last 80 years (which in Spain is also a social, political and institutional crisis), a party called Podemos won 7.9% of votes and five MEPs, significantly altering the traditional balance of the Spanish party system. This paper studies the causes of the support received by Podemos on 2014 EP elections, dissects its political strategy and analyses the characteristics of the electorate that made possible the birth of this new party. The analysis, which is illustrated using micro-data of twelve surveys, discloses Podemos political agenda.
A hurricane is known for its devastating effects but it can also bring some benefits, such as a drought ends. The emergence of Podemos (“We can”, in English) could be described in the same way. On one hand, Podemos has had devastating effects on the stability of the Spanish party system, suddenly becoming in a position to challenge PP (the Conservative Party) and PSOE (the Socialist Party), which have dominated the Spanish electoral scene in recent decades. Indeed, at the time of reviewing this paper, the Spanish party system has been showing an unknown level of fragmentation and an inability to come to an agreement to form a new government. This has led to repeat, in just six months, the 2015 General election and the event of a third election is ultimately feasible. On the other hand, the emergence of Podemos has generated a new and innovative dynamic in the Spanish political arena (forcing big parties to respond to the grave problems presented not only by the economy but also by the political and institutional system) and also has resulted in more plural regional and national parliaments.
Both phenomena, a hurricane and Podemos, cannot only be compared for their effects but also for their dynamics. A hurricane starts quietly but develops quickly gaining in strength over large areas of warm water, diminishing as it spreads across land. Similarly, after the wave of social outrage that heated the political climate in Spain in 2011 [
The aim of this research is not to predict the future trajectory of hurricane Podemos. This paper just analyses Podemos first year of live. The goals of this research are to analyze, from a neutral, scientific and external position, the reasons for the Podemos phenomenon, to discern the strategy followed by its leaders to capitalise on the circumstances, and to identify where its initial votes comes from and what the ideological and socio-demographic profile is of the citizens that made possible the irruption of this new party.
Section 2 offers some details about Podemos birth and its meteoric evolution. Section 3 shows a profile of the situation in Spain when Podemos was born. Section 4 explores the keys of Podemos success and goes deep by dissecting its political strategy. Section 5 focuses on studying the characteristics of Podemos supporters and from where their supports come from. Section 6 concludes.
Podemos was born as a political force on 14 January, 2014, when a group of academics, journalists and social activists published a manifesto with the objective of “converting the indignation into political change” by developing a political platform capable of presenting a candidacy at the European Parliamentary elections four months later. On 11 March, the group was registered as a political party and by 21 April Podemos had collected the required support to present their candidacy: 15,000 electoral signatures. In only four months, Podemos had become the fourth most voted Spanish party, with 7.9% of the votes, which resulted in five European Parliament seats (MPEs). Pablo Iglesias1, leader of Podemos, was presented shortly after as candidate of European United Left to be President of the European Parliament.
From that moment, and with the objective of winning the next general elections, the group started a process of institutionalization as a party, celebrating its Asamblea Ciudadana the weekend of 18-19 October, 2014 and starting to elect representatives for its new regional and local organizational structure. The political proposition of Podemos was based on an encouragement of social policies, a reinforcement of the fight against political corruption and an increase of direct democracy. Amid this process, CIS barometer [
In less than a year, a political formation that appeared from nowhere has become a credible political alternative to confront the two traditional major parties of the Spanish political panorama and has achieved it by changing the scene of the political competition. The electoral choice set out by Podemos asks the voter to choose not between Left and Right but between the people (Podemos) and la casta (PP and PSOE), the latter being blamed for the critical situation in which Spain found itself.
This new discursive strategy of Podemos is what has led many political analysts to compare it to Populism, a feature seen in many of the new parties that have emerged across Europe during the last few years in reaction to the economic, social, political and institutional crises Europe is living. These populist parties, despite the differences between them and the difficulties the concept entails, have won as a whole almost a quarter of MEPs: Syriza in Greece, MoVimento 5 Stelle in Italy, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden, National Front in France or UKIP in the United Kingdom, to which we can add Podemos in Spain. From Left, Podemos performs a radical criticism of the Spanish party system, the way the political system works, the European process of decision-making, the austerity policies and the management of debt. Its scope is Spanish, but its impact is European. The emergence and
growth of Podemos must be explained within the questioning wave of traditional politics that is striking Europe, with the case of Syriza in Greece as the most striking example [
In this research, we inquire into the reasons why a phenomenon such as Podemos has occurred, a situation rarely seen within party systems. For more than three decades the two biggest Spanish parties, PP and PSOE, have secured between them an electoral support of around 80% of votes, and so has been until January 2014, when Podemos appeared. What was the political situation of Spain at that time?
After almost three decades of uninterrupted growth and prosperity, in 2008 Spain was hammered, equally to other European countries, by a striking economic crisis: increase in unemployment, cuts in public services, poverty growth and other related blights. The economic crisis became associated with an institutional crisis. Citizens now not only mistrusted Government and Opposition but they mistrusted the whole political system. The constitutional framework that had stood in Spain for three long decades was suddenly losing its lustre for citizens. In little time, they realised that the country was being “governed” by foreign ministries in other countries; that the monarchy was not what it seemed; that judicial power was biased; that the great political parties were rife with corruption; that judges who pursued corrupt politicians and their allies were side-lined in their careers, whilst the sentences given to the convicted were never served; that Catalonia wanted independence; that the black economy accounted for a quarter of GDP; that administration and public services were rapidly deteriorating. To sum up, Crown, Parliament, Judiciary, Constitutional Court, the territorial organization of the country, small businesses, the welfare state; all under question within the economic crisis.
To demonstrate the cataclysm that occurred in a political and social system that, until then, had been highly valued by its citizens, we can compare the responses to questions about institutions carried out by CIS in 1998 ( [
If the crisis of confidence in the Spanish political system and its institutions was already apparent in 2012, the January 2014 CIS barometer [
two of the main problems in Spain. Government management (PP) and opposition actions were disapproved of by 70.8%. In this context, it is not surprising that the CIS election forecast for the two great parties did not reach 60% (32.1% PP and 26.6% PSOE). However, no other political force was capitalising on this situation, other than small increases in support for IU and UPyD. Spaniards wanted to vote but did not know who to vote for.
The need for an alternative, fresh political approach had been germinated three years earlier when, on 15 May 2011, thousands of citizens, the majority of them young adults, occupied for days the main emblematic squares of more than 50 Spanish cities [
The situation, as we have shown, was ripe for a political figure to occupy this space. The candidates were various. For the previous five years the best candidate seemed to be UPyD. Other candidates also appeared, such as C’s that in 2014 was in the process of making the jump into national politics, and other more recently created parties, such as VOX. However, in 2014 none of them has been born to the Spanish political scene in the same way as Podemos2. Probably the reason of the differential success of Podemos is that these were formations that have played with the traditional weapons of the political party competition. They were not seen as something new or sufficiently different for former PP and PSOE supporters to switch allegiance. The question is, therefore, what it is about the phenomenon Podemos that could explain the change in electoral behaviour of a large proportion of the Spanish voters.
The leaders of Podemos are young, but neither naive nor newcomers to politics. Pablo Iglesias himself was in Juventudes Comunistas and later in very active political and social groups; whilst Juan Carlos Monedero, Podemos former number three, was a member of IU between 1986 and 2005, becoming the right-hand man of IU leader. Likewise, all of them participated in, in one way or another, the “indignation” demonstrations that took place in Spain from 15 May 2011 onwards. However, what marks them out, as a single and cohesive group, are two further things in common: they were all active in the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Sociales (CEPS), and members of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid ( [
In the early part of 2000, a small group of faculty members of political science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) became aware of the importance of discourse in defining the actual conflicts in society. Changing the discourse would change our perception of reality and, from there new alternatives for the future could be built. This group connected with CEPS, a previous initiative from the 90’s active at the Universitat de Valencia, specialized in the Latin-American constituent processes. This association, latterly Foundation, aligned them with the main political leaders of the so-called Socialism of the 21st century. The leaders of Podemos, as members of CEPS, participated in the constituent processes of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador and also collaborated with emerging political forces and institutions in Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Paraguay.
Over several years, this group not only theorised over politics following the ideology of Ernesto Laclau (see next subsection), but they also collaborated with governments of some Latin-American countries through CEPS foundation. This common experience, universitary and Latin-American, was cohesive enough to create a group capable of drafting new political initiatives in a country in crisis and to do so with new tactics, both in theoretical and practical terms.
The leaders of Podemos have shaped their view of politics in the context of post-Marxism and, more specifically, in the context of post-structuralism. The post-structuralism “is a theoretical approach to knowledge and society that embraces the ultimate un-decidability of meaning, the constitutive power of discourse, and the political effectivity of theory and research” ( [
In this sense, perhaps the most influential philosopher of the group is Ernesto Laclau [
For Laclau, “without ‘utopia’, without the possibility of negating an order beyond the point that we are able to threaten it, there is no possibility at all of the constitution of a radical imaginary -whether democratic or of any other type”. ( [
The last part of Laclau’s approach comes from the necessity to have a leader that expresses the hegemony as a cohesive identity. According to Laclau [
This revolutionary process has in Laclau’s agenda a critical moment when institutions are unable to respond and they systematically block social demands, i.e., when a global crisis of trust occurs. When citizens are dissatisfied with the functioning of democracy it is the time of the populism break. The time for a new dichotomous division of society, but on new foundations that are not Marxist but populist: the people against the elites, the poor against the rich, the radical democracy against the ill and deciduous liberal democracy ( [
The application in discursive terms of this theoretical scheme to the Spanish reality by Podemos has been well summarised by [
Examples of this dichotomous reconstruction of the world in terms of the struggle of the people against la casta were numerous in Podemos discourse. An example of but a few quotes from its discourses are: “The left and the right parties of the regime seem very similar. Their sources, their appearance, their language, even their kind of politics are similar and, more important than the differences between them, is the difference that separates them from the average person”; “Europe is governed by absolutists and we will be their sans-culottes”; “The fight is between democratic possibilities or oligarchic closure”; “The problem is that if those who govern are the stewards of economic powers and not messengers for the citizens then things become complicated”; “If people do not get involved in politics, then others will”; “Podemos is the instrument of the underdog to beat the regime”.
As Podemos said in its foundation political communication of October 2014, “the 15-M movement, along with the demonstrations that began, helped to articulate part of the dissatisfactions that had been, until then, ignored and depoliticized…One of the challenges for those representing Podemos was to articulate this unrest and its source” [
Until the European elections in May the strategy of Podemos was to win as a complete alternative, deprecating the parties of la casta and using a fundamentally critical discourse, with little concrete details. Podemos had centred its strategy of denouncing la casta as being corrupt and incapable of solving the problems of Spain, refusing to be drawn into any other debate―such as abortion or territorial organization―that might distract voters from its priority: that the fight is not that between Left and Right but between the people (Podemos) and la casta (the traditional parties, especially PP and PSOE but also IU or the nationalists CiU and PNV). Podemos focused on replacing the main cleavages of Spanish politics (Left vs. Right, Centre vs. Periphery) with a new cleavage: we (the people) against they (the elite, including politicians). According to Errejón ( [
The crisis in the model of representation and of the political parties had slowly but consistently weakened the electoral grounds of all the parties and their root identities3. Twenty years ago, being seen to be vulnerable to electoral situations could have been interpreted in many social spaces as a sign of insolvency or of political sophistication. Today that perception has changed. In many areas, the stigma has reversed and the faithful voters are who have to explain their electoral behaviour, who are seen in their environment as being manipulated, ill-informed or lacking in political education. So, the campaign discourse of Podemos was totally surprising and new. It attacked the big traditional parties where they least expected. As advocated by Ignatieff [
Going public through a manifesto at the beginning of 2014, with limited financial means and without an organic structure as support, Podemos had to face national elections in just four months, being unknown to the public, against some competitors that had all these means and, furthermore, were well known. This is what is so surprising about the phenomenon Podemos: how could it obtain more than a million votes, almost 8% of cast votes? The answer had to be sought, beyond a capable, cohesive group with political experience and with a discourse and a defined and relevant strategy, in the bridges they built to win the confidence of a large part of voters: “Some carry out politics by putting up walls, we do it by building bridges”. These bridges, in our opinion, are fourfold: discussion groups, social networks, mass media and a charismatic leader.
The circles are discussion groups of people who regularly meet, face to face, to debate and come up with solutions and actions to common problems. They are groups which usually have local roots―from city suburbs, towns or villages―and function as units or workgroups. They answer to the philosophy of participative democracy (about which authors such as MacPherson or Poulantzas theorised in the 70’s and 80’s), having evolved with the new century and anti-globalisation movements. In fact, they reflect the assembly spirit of 15-M [
This structure worked through the EP campaign and was a motivational element for Podemos activists during the party foundation. Indeed, Podemos logo is made up with several circles. However, although this structure has continued, after October 2014 they have given way to a new organic structure with an elected team and an electoral system on the internet.
The electoral campaign on the social networks started to gain importance after Obama’s triumph in 2008 [
With a group of between 15 and 20 volunteers organised in shifts from 10.00 to 23.00 hrs, the effort reaped results. Indeed, according to November 2014 figures [
Apart from circles and social networks, without doubt the most contributing factor to the electoral success of Podemos was the constant presence of its leader in mass media, with positive results in terms of image and delivery of a clear and strong message. In particular, from his appearances on the fourth and fifth most watched national television channels, La Sexta and Cuatro.
Pablo Iglesias and his team considered their media presence as a strategic question, for which they had been preparing for years. As stated by Pablo Iglesias himself: “We practise in political communication using the main arena of political socialisation, that of television”. They were very involved in production programmes which were promulgated on the internet or on minor channels such as Canal K and Canal 33. It was these programmes, initially with low viewing audiences, where Pablo Iglesias grew as a presenter, interviewer or simply debater. His objective was twofold: to dominate the television media and to develop new formulas of political communication. After years of experimenting, the path followed bore fruit. The big television channels supported Pablo Iglesias, and occasionally other Podemos leaders, to bring something new to their political debates and, above all, a discourse that was completely different and provocative.
The fourth bridge to society is marked out by the figure of the leader. A figure that, according to Laclau, has to represent the new political subject: the people. The Podemos leadership fell to a young university academic called Pablo Iglesias. His biography fitted in well with the new discourse and planned strategy ( [
The European Parliamentary election of May 2014 was the first electoral process in which Podemos participated. In it, Podemos obtained 1,253,837 votes and five seats of the 54 Spanish MEPs. This result was both a surprise and an unprecedented electoral success, although just a year after its born this seemed quite poor considering the expectations of electoral growth that polls showed for then (see
Recall vote is an important indicator in electoral behaviour analysis and one of the basic ingredients for bias correction of Spanish polls [
The differences between aggregated recall votes and actual voting result tends to favour winning candidates due to bandwagon and spiral of silent effects [
Usually, however, the differences are generally not so large qualitatively. Probably, on this occasion, the higher recall vote towards Podemos might indicate the sympathy of a large number of voters who, not having voted for Podemos, might have done it if they had known how successful the candidature was going to be in elections4. Having made this assumption, it is highly unlikely that the socio-demographic profile of this group would have differed significantly from those that actually voted Podemos, so, as is normal when only nonresponse bias is present the distributions that we obtain conditioning on recall vote are a true reflection of reality. Next, using the microdata of the 2014 EP post-electoral survey conducted by CIS [
The first question is where did the votes for Podemos come from? In other words, from what party had the voters defected?
From the ideological perspective (left-right axis) the votes Podemos received from IU, Amaiur and C-Equo was no surprise, as voters view these parties as ideologically similar. However, one of the features that most surprised analysts was the ability of Podemos to attract voters from the political space of majorities (see
Ideology | Population | PP | PSOE | Podemos | IU | Abstention |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Extreme left (1 - 2) | 9.5 | 0.3 | 10.2 | 22.8 | 39.4 | 4.8 |
Left (3 - 4) | 31.7 | 1.0 | 63.2 | 53.3 | 48.2 | 24.4 |
Centre (5) | 17.4 | 10.1 | 17.2 | 12.7 | 5.8 | 22.4 |
Right (6 - 7) | 14.9 | 47.4 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 13.3 |
Extreme Right (8 - 10) | 7.3 | 32.8 | 0.7 | 0.5 | 0.0 | 3.9 |
Don’t know/No answer | 19.2 | 8.4 | 6.3 | 8.1 | 5.1 | 31.1 |
Source: Own elaboration using self-placement measures given by [
successful delivery of this new identity is based on Podemos aligning themselves to the main issues shared with the majority of voters, adapting a discourse respectful of the hierarchy of the social agenda.
This would explain, as highlighted by posterior polls, the ability of Podemos to attract floating voters of PP and PSOE. A huge group comprising in the 2011 General elections up to 21.9% of PP voters and 32.9% of PSOE voters [
From a demographic perspective (
In socio-economic terms (
Population | PP | PSOE | Podemos | IU | Abstention | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gender | Women | 50.8 | 52.3 | 54.0 | 46.7 | 44.5 | 51.2 | |
Men | 49.2 | 47.7 | 46.0 | 53.3 | 55.5 | 48.8 | ||
Age | 18 to 35 | 26.3 | 13.9 | 13.0 | 35.5 | 26.3 | 32.5 | |
35 to 54 | 39.1 | 29.3 | 36.5 | 46.2 | 45.3 | 40.5 | ||
≥55 | 34.6 | 56.8 | 50.5 | 18.3 | 28.5 | 27.1 | ||
Education | Uneducated | 6.0 | 5.6 | 13.7 | 2.0 | 4.4 | 4.7 | |
Elementary | 19.3 | 26.5 | 29.1 | 7.1 | 12.4 | 17.6 | ||
Secondary | 25.3 | 21.3 | 24.6 | 23.4 | 16.1 | 28.7 | ||
Baccalaureate | 13.9 | 12.2 | 7.4 | 20.3 | 21.2 | 14.0 | ||
Professional | 16.6 | 10.8 | 11.6 | 20.8 | 21.2 | 18.4 | ||
University | 18.9 | 23.7 | 13.7 | 25.9 | 24.8 | 16.6 | ||
Habitat size | Rural area | 21.8 | 25.9 | 27.3 | 14.5 | 19.4 | 20.9 | |
Small cities | 26.3 | 22.9 | 26.3 | 23.4 | 25.8 | 27.2 | ||
Medium cities | 12.1 | 11.4 | 11.1 | 13.0 | 11.9 | 12.7 | ||
Big cities | 22.9 | 21.1 | 20.6 | 28.7 | 22.9 | 23.5 | ||
Big capitals | 16.8 | 18.6 | 14.7 | 20.4 | 20.0 | 15.6 | ||
Social class | Lower | 7.9 | 3.5 | 10.5 | 3.6 | 4.4 | 9.9 | |
Self-placement | Lower-middle | 25.0 | 16.7 | 27.0 | 32.5 | 24.8 | 25.4 | |
Middle | 43.2 | 46.0 | 44.2 | 39.6 | 50.4 | 41.7 | ||
Middle-upper | 19.0 | 26.8 | 12.6 | 22.3 | 16.8 | 18.2 | ||
Upper | 1.4 | 4.5 | 1.1 | 0.5 | 0.7 | 0.9 |
Source: Own elaboration using CIS [
Population | PP | PSOE | Podemos | IU | Abstention | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Personal | No income | 20.4 | 18.8 | 17.2 | 22.3 | 15.3 | 22.2 | |
Income | ≤600 ?/span> | 15.9 | 8.4 | 25.3 | 13.7 | 14.6 | 16.0 | |
601 to 900 ?/span> | 14.2 | 15.3 | 16.5 | 12.2 | 15.3 | 13.4 | ||
901 to 1200 ?/span> | 13.3 | 13.9 | 14.0 | 14.7 | 16.8 | 12.0 | ||
1201 to 2400 ?/span> | 13.2 | 17.1 | 10.5 | 13.7 | 19.0 | 11.8 | ||
≥2401 ?/span> | 1.2 | 1.0 | 2.1 | 0.0 | 0.7 | 1.2 | ||
No answer | 21.9 | 25.4 | 14.4 | 23.4 | 18.2 | 23.4 | ||
Family | ≤ 900 ?/span> | 21.9 | 17.8 | 31.9 | 15.7 | 16.8 | 22.1 | |
Income | 901 to 1,200 ?/span> | 14.5 | 13.9 | 19.3 | 12.7 | 11.7 | 14.1 | |
1201 to 1800 ?/span> | 15.4 | 16.0 | 12.3 | 18.3 | 27.7 | 13.6 | ||
1800 to 2400 ?/span> | 9.1 | 10.8 | 8.4 | 10.7 | 11.7 | 8.1 | ||
≥2401 ?/span> | 8.1 | 10.8 | 8.4 | 7.1 | 9.5 | 7.2 | ||
No answer | 31.0 | 30.7 | 19.6 | 35.5 | 22.6 | 34.9 | ||
Labour | Worker | 39.9 | 33.1 | 28.8 | 49.7 | 46.7 | 42.4 | |
Status | Retired worker | 19.6 | 35.2 | 26.3 | 11.2 | 20.4 | 14.3 | |
Retired (no worker) | 4.0 | 7.0 | 8.1 | 0.5 | 0.1 | 3.2 | ||
Unemployed | 24.7 | 12.9 | 26.0 | 26.4 | 22.6 | 28.1 | ||
Student | 4.4 | 1.0 | 2.1 | 8.6 | 3.6 | 5.3 | ||
Houseworker | 7.2 | 10.8 | 8.8 | 3.6 | 6.6 | 6.5 | ||
Breadwinner | Main | 45.8 | 50.2 | 48.8 | 39.6 | 51.8 | 44.0 | |
condition | Other | 42.7 | 37.3 | 41.4 | 51.3 | 33.6 | 44.3 | |
Shared | 10.4 | 11.5 | 8.1 | 7.6 | 13.9 | 10.9 |
Source: Own elaboration using [
results in a higher level of single people (43.1%) in its electorate. A figure that contrasts to those of the other main parties: 19.3% PSOE and 18.5% PP. This would suggest a greater proportion of Podemos voters still living at parents’ home, because of low salaries or the lack of employment, or because they are still studying. In contrast, the proportion of pensioners voting for Podemos was less than half the level of the other parties.
In short, in socio-demographical and socio-economical terms, the profile of Podemos first voters could be described as young, with leftist ideology and socially ascending, with a higher level of education and strong commitment to the new middle classes. Podemos was not only working class but also a group that encompasses an electorate half-way between IU and PSOE profiles. These are not the only interesting issues that can be derived from this survey. Further analysis of microdata [
The data ultimately endorses two hypotheses of Podemos electoral strategy. Firstly, the increased permeability of the electorate to social situations in a critical moment of strong distrust of institutions and traditional forces, with the consequent weakening of traditional left/right (and nationalists) patterns. Secondly, the influence that Iglesias’ profile as the party image had on the results. His presence on TV (La Sexta and Cuatro), coupled with a successful campaign through social networks and the Internet, achieved high visibility for Podemos and its message, despite the greater weight of the traditional parties in the media and the limited resources of Podemos.
In the European elections of May 2014, something unprecedented in Spanish politics occurred. A new, unknown group, created just four months earlier and without apparent financial resources, became the fourth political party of the country, triggering a political earthquake. What’s more, according to polls, it was only a year later in a position to challenge in the next general election the supremacy of the two traditional major parties, PP and PSOE. Something confirmed two years later in the December, 2015 General election.
In this paper, we analyse the conditions that made this fact possible and the strategy followed by Podemos to harness the benefits that the economic, political and institutional crises offered to empower the emergence of a new political presence in Spain. The innovative change of cleavages proposed by Podemos and the great exposure of its leader to mass media has enabled them to transmit to the people its new and fresh discourse, based on a new dichotomous division of society: the people against the (corrupted) elites.
Podemos is picking off the less-identified voters of both PP and PSOE, and mobilizing important areas of previous abstainers as well as gobbling up small parties. Compared to voters of major parties, Podemos supporters are younger, more urban and educated, and consequently they use digital social networks to a greater degree. Its support comes mainly from people located in the (extreme) left of the ideological spectrum and among those who see themselves as being lower-middle or middle class, those who are currently unemployed or those who are working but receiving a low salary, being mainly no family breadwinners. The analyses of CIS polls also support the main hypotheses of Podemos electoral strategy: the growing weakness of ideological identification of Spanish voters and their increased permeability to particular issues, and the election of Pablo Iglesias as party image given his increased exposure on TV (La Sexta and Cuatro).
The authors wish to thank Marie Hodkinson for her help translating the paper into English and a reviewer for its valuable comments. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economics and Competitiveness under grant CSO2013-43054-R.
Pavía, J.M., Bo- doque, A. and Martín, J. (2016) The Birth of a New Party: Podemos, a Hurricane in the Spanish Crisis of Trust. Open Journal of So- cial Sciences, 4, 67-86. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jss.2016.49008
Votes in 2014 European Parliament Election | Recall | ||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2011-Parties | C’s | CEU | LPD | EPDD | IU-IP | Podemos | PP | Primav. | PSOE | UPyD | Others | Abstent. | 2011 |
Amaiur | 26 | 1224 | 218,198 | 76 | 844 | 47,871 | 0 | 10,049 | 722 | 794 | 46,065 | 1,735 | 327,604 |
BNG | 3925 | 1 | 70,527 | 0 | 29,010 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 77,852 | 181,322 |
CC-NC-PNC | 42,264 | 510,764 | 1 | 284,402 | 10,102 | 2840 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 16,105 | 131,628 | 998,108 |
CiU | 1 | 62,577 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 11 | 82,105 | 144,709 |
C-Equo | 36,317 | 30 | 3 | 11 | 26 | 117,701 | 19 | 183,592 | 22 | 23 | 55 | 49 | 337,848 |
ESQUERRA | 1 | 3359 | 0 | 198,744 | 10,638 | 1541 | 0 | 0 | 1660 | 0 | 3,342 | 33,330 | 252,615 |
IU-LV | 31,411 | 0 | 0 | 17,687 | 836,934 | 171,285 | 1 | 20,589 | 10,140 | 7873 | 101,618 | 461,602 | 1,659,140 |
EAJ-PNV | 0 | 200,457 | 86 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 40 | 117,225 | 317,812 |
PP | 215,972 | 1 | 9013 | 1 | 117,727 | 167,019 | 3,905,130 | 19,524 | 178,729 | 297,068 | 599,906 | 5,185,852 | 10,695,942 |
PSOE | 36,456 | 23,160 | 1 | 28,930 | 297,930 | 331,567 | 25,256 | 28,771 | 3,070,494 | 135,374 | 247,987 | 2,659,847 | 6,885,773 |
UPyD | 17,668 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 18,943 | 42,317 | 24,551 | 8023 | 17,765 | 432,920 | 48,184 | 518,136 | 1,128,508 |
Others | 66,780 | 7022 | 5823 | 16,373 | 97,111 | 65,663 | 18,006 | 9186 | 25,016 | 47,417 | 382,086 | 602,672 | 1,343,155 |
EU voters | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4382 | 15,765 | 6033 | 4418 | 0 | 20,339 | 1 | 11,916 | 274,893 | 337,748 |
Abstention | 23,143 | 37,905 | 22,809 | 59,875 | 75,370 | 248,805 | 96,088 | 17,698 | 252,288 | 90,883 | 272,314 | 9,743,582 | 10,940,760 |
New by age | 23,181 | 5471 | 0 | 19,591 | 64,903 | 51,193 | 24,866 | 4834 | 37,051 | 9874 | 96,641 | 625,435 | 963,040 |
Results 2014 | 497,146 | 851,971 | 326,464 | 630,072 | 1,575,308 | 1,253,837 | 4,098,339 | 302,266 | 3,614,232 | 1,022,232 | 1,826,274 | 20,515,943 | 36,514,084 |
Source: Own elaboration using 2011 and 2014 actual results [