What do young people vote in Spain? Is your behavior at the polls different from that of the rest of the population? The polls collect forecasts for future elections but also the memory of the citizens’ vote, and this allows us to know that the majority of young people vote for the PSOE and PP, like the other generations. But among the barrage of figures from the CIS poll in April, prior to the 28-M elections, one piece of information caught our attention: young people were the majority age group among those who said they were going to vote for Vox.
Two months later, the June poll revealed that half of those who said they would vote for the far right had not. But the data reveals a harmony. What does a party like Vox do to captivate them like this?
A first response may be in nature: spiders that blend in like ants, mantises that blend in like flowers… are examples of how to attract members of another species that can be applied between different generations. How can a boomer capture the attention of young people? Broadcasting in its wave, with its codes and communication formats.
Millennials and centennials have grown up in audiovisual communication. Social networks are part of their socialization and politicization process and influence their values, behaviors and attitudes. And also in your vote. Instagram is the network they use the most, but TikTok is their exclusive domain. And that is where the traditional parties find it difficult to penetrate. But Vox has found the formula and is, by far, the one that best connects with young people in this network and the one that obtains the most support and the most positive reactions, according to the study The TikTok generation at the polls on 23-J, from the Science4Insights company.
That is being the great success of Vox, knowing how to get its message across in an age group in which the parties have a difficult time entering, notes Ana Salazar, political scientist and director of Idus3 Estrategia. Neither the PP nor the PSOE manage themselves adequately in these youth social networks. “Vox’s message is simple, not very elaborate and not at all argued, but they have understood how to work with audiovisual codes that are generationally far away. There are armies of influencers and youtubers who shout Vox messages and they are in the age range of those to whom they are addressed. and they do it very well. The content is terrifying, hateful messages and frequently without a hint of truth, but they have a large audience,” says Salazar, who is a member of the board of directors of the Political Communication Association.
Young people are an important base in the Vox electorate, says Érika Bejarano, an analyst at 40db, a company whose latest survey shows a technical tie between the PP and Vox in direct intention to vote in the 18 to 24-year-old bracket. But that can change. “Partisan identity is one of the factors, if not the main one, for which we decide to vote, and young people are forming their partisan identity. In the latest CIS barometer, 14.1% of the group between 18 and 24 years of age considered Vox the closest ideological party, compared to 7.3% of the rest of the population”, adds Bejarano.
The last 40db barometer goes in the same vein. “Young Vox voters see it as the party closest to their ideas, while the older ones believe that it is the one that best defends their interests,” he underlines. Another fact is that twice as many men vote for the extreme right as women.
But Vox is not the first game for young people. In Spain this group votes mostly to the left. Nor is it the first choice of young right-wingers. Not yet. “Vox is very popular in the 18 to 34 age group, especially the youngest, and it is getting closer and closer to the PP, but it is still behind both in sympathy and closeness and in direct intention to vote,” underlines the analyst from 40db.
This interest of Vox in attracting the youngest has an explanation: their political identity is yet to be built and at the same time it is an investment in the future, points out Ana Salazar: “The normal thing in an indoctrination strategy is to start from an early age.” And she warns that action must be taken to correct it: “If there is a generation that shapes its identity with hate messages and fake news, we are putting something delicate at risk, such as our democratic and coexistence system,” she points out.
But the extreme right knows what it is doing. “Vox is a well-oiled communication machine, which perfectly follows the eleven principles of propaganda: simplification, contagion, transposition, exaggeration, vulgarization, orchestration, renewal, credibility, silencing, transfusion, and unanimity,” explains César Calderón, director of public affairs company Redlines.
Messages from the extreme right circulate on TikTok in memes or videos that are easily downloaded and forwarded on Twitter or Whatsapp, making them go viral. The content is very polarizing, with an anti-immigration, anti-vaccine, anti-European, anti-immigration, and denier of climate change or gender violence bias. “Vox’s vote is tremendously expressive and gregarious, their followers are proud to vote for them and they do not stop repeating it and sharing all the content produced by that party on their networks in an uncritical way,” Calderón highlights.
Vox has found how to connect with a very like-minded voter through a discourse with an anti-feminist approach that is surprisingly popular with young people. “There are many young people who have grown up on equality, feminism or non-toxic masculinities, but macho positions have not disappeared. There is talk of anti-feminism, but often it is not just a confrontation for women’s rights or effective equality, but rather it is perceived as a threat to male power”, underlines Begonya Enguix, professor of Social Anthropology at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. (UOC). “Vox will not say anything against women. Their feminism is retrograde but they are not misogynistic. In that, too, his speech is ambivalent. But many accounts circulate on the networks that are pure misogyny and that influences young people, ”she adds.
That extreme speech a young man can take to his close environment, friends and family. And in that case someone could refute him. “According to the CIS, 49.7% of young people chose their vote on 28-M due to personal convictions, but in the other half the useful vote had a lot of weight, and for 15% family influence did,” highlights Ana Salazar.
These and many other reasons will be able to guide 1.6 million young people on July 23, who will be able to vote for the first time in general elections.
