A question of demand

Not only a territorial matter: The electoral surge of VOX and the anti-libertarian reaction

“…In the Spanish case, there is also conflicting evidence available. Rama et al [7] have shown the relevance of attitudes towards Gay marriage whereas the combined set of items used by Marcos-Marne et al [13] does not show explanatory power when controlling for alternative explanations. In any case, the direct test of any variable explicitly measuring opposition to feminism is quite limited for the Spanish case.…”

“…However, this relationship is far from unanimous and appears only in part of the cases [27]. Previous Spanish research shows contradictory findings, with some studies pointing to a null relationship [5,6] whereas the most recent pieces show that immigration plays an important explanatory role [7,13]. With immigration being an issue highly salient for VOX's voters [7,10], and increasingly discussed [12,14] and polarised [34], the great presence of the problematisation of immigration in the party's discourse [7,13,16,35] suggest that we should indeed be able to find a relationship between these attitudes and their electoral support.…”

“…In the weeks after the 2018 Andalusian Parliament elections, several analyses published in the press pointed out to the role of different factors explaining the vote for VOX such as antiimmigration attitudes [8][9][10] or the penalty of corruption in the regional government and the rejection of the gender equality and historical memory acts [10]. Also, more recent and complete contributions have demonstrated that opposition to immigration [7,[11][12][13][14], cultural conservatism or attitudes towards gay marriage, as well as the preference for an authoritarian regime [7] or populist attitudes [13] are factors that help driving electoral support for VOX, suggesting some similarities with other Western European radical right-wing parties.…”

“…At European level, little attention has been paid to this factor, but some studies have shown a positive relationship between authoritarianism and voting for the radical right [28,33,39]. Marcos-Marne et al [13] have recently argued that it plays a role for the Spanish case, a quite likely scenario since authoritarian aspects are also present in the VOX electoral discourse [7,16,35]. This matters because, as shown by Rama et al [7: 129-130], support for VOX increases among those individuals who prefer an authoritarian regime or who consider that the type of political regime does not matter.…”

“…According to this, VOX's electoral surge was in its beginnings mainly the product of a reaction of Spanish nationalism towards the independence threat that emerged in Catalonia [5,6]. Even the book of Rama et al [7]-the most comprehensive account of VOX to date-continue to attribute VOX's electoral emergence mainly to the Catalan conflict [7: 93].…”