What do young people vote for in Spain? Is their behavior at the polls different from the rest of the population? The polls gather forecasts for future elections, but also citizens’ voting memories, and this allows us to know that young people mostly vote for the PSOE and the PP, like other generations. But among the avalanche of figures from the CIS survey in April, prior to the 28-M elections, one figure caught our attention: young people were the majority age group among those who said they would 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 highlights a tune. What does a party like Vox do to captivate them?
A first answer can be nature: spiders that camouflage themselves as ants, praying mantises that camouflage themselves as flowers… These are examples of how to attract members of another species that can also be applied between different generations. How can a boomer capture the attention of young people? Broadcasting on his wave, with his codes and communication formats.
Millennials and centenarians 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 his vote. Instagram is the network they use the most, but TikTok is their exclusive domain. And it is there that traditional parties find it difficult to penetrate. But Vox has found the formula and is, by far, the party that best manages to connect with young people on this network and the one that gets the most support and the most positive reactions, according to the study The TikTok generation before the polls on 23-J, from the Science4Insights company.
This is the great success of Vox, having found a way to get its message to an age group in which it is difficult for the parties to enter, notes Ana Salazar, political scientist and director of Idus3 Estrategia. Neither the PP nor the PSOE know how to interact in these young people’s 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 very far from them generationally. There are armies of influencers and YouTubers who vociferate Vox’s messages and are part of the age range of those they target. And they do it very well. The content is terrible, hateful messages and often without a hint of truth, but they have a lot of audience”, highlights Salazar, who is a member of the board of directors of the Political Communication Association.
Young voters are an important base in Vox’s electorate, says Érika Bejarano, analyst at 40db, a company whose latest survey shows a technical tie between the PP and Vox in direct voting intention in the 18 to 24 segment years.
But that may change. “Partisan identity is one of the factors, if not the main one, by which we decide the vote, and young people are forming their party identity. In the last CIS barometer, 14.1% of the 18 to 24-year-old group considered Vox to be the ideologically closest party, compared to 7.3% of the rest of the population,” adds Bejarano. The last barometer of 40db goes along these lines. “Elderly Vox voters believe that it is the party that best defends their interests, while young people see it as the closest to their ideas”, he underlines. Another fact is that twice as many men as women vote for the extreme right.
But Vox is not the first party of young people. In Spain, they vote for left-wing parties. Nor is it the first choice of young right-wingers. Not yet. “Vox is very popular among the 18- to 34-year-olds, especially the youngest, and it is getting closer to the PP, but it is still behind both in terms of sympathy and proximity and direct intention to vote,” he underlines.
Vox’s interest in attracting younger people has an explanation: their political identity must be built and at the same time it is an investment in the future, says Ana Salazar: “What is normal in an indoctrination strategy is to start from ‘early ages’. And he warns that it is necessary to act to correct it: “If there is a generation that forms its identity with messages of hate and fake news, we are putting at risk something as delicate as our democratic and coexistence system”, he points out.
But the extreme right knows very well what it is doing. “Vox is an excellently well-oiled communication machine that perfectly follows the eleven principles of propaganda: simplification, contagion, transposition, exaggeration, vulgarization, orchestration, renewal, verisimilitude, silencing, transfusion and unanimity”, details César Calderón, director from the public affairs company Redlines.
Far-right messages 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 climate change or gender violence denier bias. “Vox’s vote is tremendously expressive and gregarious, the supporters are proud to vote for them and they don’t stop repeating it and sharing on the networks all the content produced by the party in an uncritical way”, highlights Calderón.
Vox has found a way to connect with a very like-minded voter through anti-feminist discourse that is surprisingly needed among young people. “There are many young people who have grown up in equality, feminism or non-toxic masculinities, but masculinist positions have not disappeared. Anti-feminism is talked about, but often it is not just a confrontation for women’s rights or effective equality, but is perceived as a threat to male power”, explains Begonya Enguix, professor of Social Anthropology at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). “Vox will not say anything against women. Their feminism is retrograde, but they are not misogynists. His speech is also ambivalent about this. But there are many accounts circulating on the networks that are pure misogyny and this influences young people”, he adds.
A young person can take this speech to the closest environment, friends and family. And, in this case, someone could refute him. “According to the CIS, 49.7% of young people chose their vote on 28-M for personal convictions, but, in the case of the other half, the useful vote had a lot of weight, and for 15% the family influence did it”, points out Ana Salazar.
These and other reasons will guide 1.6 million young people on July 23, who will vote for the first time in general elections.
