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In this article, we triangulate qualitative data regarding the framing of the pandemic and the strategic decisions taken by Spain's new populist radical right-wing party, VOX, with a quantitative analysis of aggregate polling data and individual-level survey responses to answer three questions: how has VOX framed the politics of the pandemic? What actions has VOX taken in response to COVID-19? Have the events of the COVID-19 crisis affected VOX's electoral chances? We argue that VOX's response to the pandemic has focused on augmenting the antagonistic relationship between itself and the political establishment, especially the left-wing government. Strategically, VOX has sought to leverage the health crisis to engage in legislative manoeuvres aiming, without success, to position itself as the primary party-in-waiting for right-wing voters. We also demonstrate that VOX has proven to be resilient against the potential for electoral decline that was widely prophesied at the beginning of the pandemic.

At the theoretical level, even if populism and democracy are not necessarily antithetical, the former challenges the liberal component of democracy, advocating for the majority rule and putting under stress the principles of the rule of law. To test the relationship between liberal democracy and populism, we created four new questions that measure the support for liberal democracy conceived as a trade-off with different policies. We tested our battery of questions in a pilot survey with educated young voters. The results show that those individuals who exhibit lower levels of support for liberal democracy are the ones with higher populist attitudes. This might be due to the fact that the original battery of questions grasps the level of support for liberal democracy better than the standard ‘Churchillian’ question.

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