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This paper analyzes the use of Twitter by the candidates for the presidency of the Government of Spain of the five main parties at the national level -PSOE, PP, Vox, Podemos and Ciudadanos- of the general elections campaigns held in April and November 2019. The main purpose of our study is to determine the strategies used of the microblogging network by the leaders, both in terms of activity, interaction and notoriety and in terms of topics and discursive development, as well as their similarities and differences. The secondary objective is to study the evolution of these strategies both between the two campaigns and with respect to previous elections. To this end, the research is based on a content analysis methodology that studies quantitative, qualitative and discursive elements. The results reveal an uneven use of Twitter in terms of the frequency of updates, but similar in terms of its unidirectionality, with scarce interaction with other users and a predominance of tweets with their own content over retweets. The dissemination of other people's content was used almost entirely to promote the candidate's political party and, to a lesser extent, to interact with journalists. Dialogue with citizens was almost always residual, both in retweets and in responses. This utilitarian conception of the microblogging network was accompanied by a polarizing thematic selection, with an almost general preponderance of political issues over policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the evolution of the electoral use of Instagram in Spain, from its origins as a political communication channel to its current consolidation. A content analysis of eleven variables is applied to the formal, spatial, personal, thematic-discursive and interactive dimensions of the activity carried out on this social network by the candidates for the presidency of the Spanish Government of the parties that ran with the highest vote expectations in the General Elections of December 2015, June 2016 and April and November 2019 (571 posts). The results show the consolidation of Instagram as a political communication tool and the growing interest of the parties in it, as well as the increasing importance of short videos as a format. The electoral use of this social network is carried out with an increasingly mobilising intention, as evidenced both by the themes chosen and, above all, by the purpose of the publications, the spatial context represented and the hashtags used. The growing characterisation of candidates as leaders of the masses is also evidence of the personalisation of political leadership that occurs in this medium during electoral campaigns. Finally, the phenomenon of polarisation and the presence of populist stylistic traits are also beginning to be noticeable, as reflected in the increase in political issues and negative emotional appeals in the messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the use of Telegram as an electoral communication tool in Spain, focusing on the messages sent by the five major parties in the country (PSOE, PP, Vox, Unidas Podemos and Ciudadanos) during the campaigns corresponding to the general elections of April 28 and November 10, 2019. This research paper steps outside this somewhat still narrow area of methodology by combining two different research techniques on a methodological triangulation: traditional content analysis and data mining processes using Python. Results, which show how political parties in Spain use Telegram mainly as a mobilization tool while expressing closeness with the candidate, are contextualized thanks to the implementation of Big Data analysis techniques that improve and allow for an in-depth investigation and understanding of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the informative coverage of 9 Latin American newspapers on the general election held in Spain on November 10, 2019. This is considered an important event that helped close a turbulent period of the national political life. A content analysis sheet was applied to all texts regarding the campaign appeared between November 1 and 11 (n = 35), considering, among other variables, location, extension, authorship, sources, genres, nature of the content and frame. The results allow concluding that the selected newspapers dedicated a wide space to the November 10 election. Furthermore, media outlet granted part of their coverage an interpretive dimension and offered a vision on the campaign dominated by the strategic and game frames, since they placed the focus on the polls and the possibility of post-electoral agreements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the information coverage by the Spanish newspapers El país, El mundo, ABC, and La vanguardia in Twitter on the electoral campaign prior to the 10 November 2019 general elections. A content analysis of all tweets published by these media regarding the elections (n = 1,462) between Friday 1 and Saturday 9 November reveals that, although there are differences in the production patterns and features of the messages, the subject received notable attention in all the newspapers. The coverage gravitated around two main themes: the 4N electoral debate, and campaign events. The results reveal that, although most of the tweets had a neutral tone, messages with clear positioning corresponding to the editorial line of the newspaper were also published, albeit to a lesser extent. During the electoral period, the media agenda revolved around this issue, accounting for around one-fifth of all pieces published on Twitter. Newspapers do not take advantage of the dialogic nature or possibilities offered by this social network to create a community among their readers, limiting themselves to the dissemination of content from their digital edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the content of the electoral hoaxes identified by factcheckers Maldita and Newtral, using as a case study the campaign for the April 28th 2019 Spanish general election. To study the context in which electoral disinformation operates, a bot was created on Twitter (@unfaking_es) that followed the activity of the accounts of the main media, political parties, candidates, official institutions and factcheckers. Most of the 37 hoaxes analysed originated on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, and the electoral system itself was the main target of disinformation, being labelled as fraudulent. The debate on Twitter was dominated by live fact-checking carried out carried out by left-wing media, media, with Pablo Casado (Popular with Pablo Casado (Popular Party) being the most frequently debunked candidate. most frequently debunked candidate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This is a research paper that focuses on the Spanish General Elections of 2015 and the subsequent elections, which were held in 2016 as a result of the former ones not producing any agreements leading to the creation of a stable executive. During that period and, in particular, since 2015, politics in Spain overcame a historical two-party domination for the first time in its democracy - on the one hand, the Popular Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) - giving way to new political parties aspiring to reach national government, for example, Podemos and Ciudadanos. The main elements of the research deal with studies in agenda setting including an analysis of the Spanish public and media agendas, with a particular emphasis on political coverage. Methodology: A content analysis of the press has been carried out (El Mundo and El País) during the campaign period of the aforementioned elections, revealing the most significant topics on the agenda. Results and Discussion: The data produced by the study indicate that the problems deemed important for the country by Spanish voters have been relegated to a second tier during the electoral campaign. Leaders and different groups prefer to highlight issues linked to politics and governance called "meta-topics" in their speeches, centering on pacts, agreements and self-reference rather than the usual issues of the political agenda such as employment, health and education, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the behavior of Spain's main media within a specific electoral context: the 2008 General Election. To this end, we analyzed the coverage of the major Spanish newspapers (El País, El Mundo and Abc) in order to determine whether their agenda setting and framing had political motives, in addition to the merely informative intention. Spanish media had at least two options within the context of the elections: to offer their readers a neutral coverage or, on the contrary, to taint it with obvious partisanship. Our findings demonstrate the predominance of the latter option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes economic voting in decentralized contexts. The existence of several arenas of political competition allows for the appearance of vertical electoral contamination processes, implying that voters do not evaluate the performance of national and regional governments independently. Using the case of Spain in the period 1982-2008, it is demonstrated that this electoral contamination spreads from the national arena to the regional one, and not the other way round. However, electoral contamination tends to diminish as the process of decentralization takes place over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political corruption is a key theoretical issue regarding the quality of democracy. And it was a main theme from the empirical point of view during the last Spanish local elections, held on May 27, 2007. This paper focuses upon the electoral behaviour of foreigners on that occasion and aims to know whether and to what extent corruption mobilized those citizens. Data confirm that there is a relationship between public charges of political corruption and electoral mobilization, but this is not enough as to affect election results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reviews the conventional wisdom on the positive relationship between turnout and the electoral results of the PSOE in general elections in Spain. We highlight the existence of three causal mechanisms that give rise to different predictions about this correlation and therefore undermine the existing parsimonious thesis. Some of our arguments are empirically tested with aggregate district-level data corresponding to the ten general elections held to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use the method of counterfactual simulation to estimate the number of strategic votes transferred from the United Left (IU) to the Socialist Party (PSOE) in the last three Spanish general elections. The strategic voters we refer to are those who, in spite of IU being their first political preference, voted for the PSOE in order to attain representation benefits. The counterfactual simulation procedure is used to examine how the predicted individual probability of voting for a party changes when the strategic incentives at constituency level are removed. Our results lend support to the hypothesis that IU's electoral and parliamentary collapse was due in no small measure to the strategic behavior of its followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manipulation of the Spanish electoral system carried out by the political elites that led the political transition has been proved by several studies. This manipulation moves through the existence of a large number of low-magnitude districts and its interaction with malapportionment, the Hondt formula and, above all, the variance effect of district magnitudes. In this paper I will discuss another bias that has not yet been studied by researchers, and which also paved the way for UCD victories: the turnout bias. I will show how the manipulation of the electoral system led UCD to win systematically in the districts where there was low turnout and how its opponents won in districts with high turnout. Therefore the "price" of the seats for UCD was lower. This bias has remained and it favours those parties that have support in the districts with low turnout which are, at the same time, more overrepresented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper intends to shed new light on the causes of split-ticket voting in concurrent multi-level national and regional elections held under PR electoral rules. Up to now, differences in electoral outcomes in Spanish concurrent elections have been understood as a product of the mechanisms associated with second order elections. Evidence against this interpretation is presented, and alternative explanations from the international literature are tested. We find that, on one hand, Andalusian intrablock and regionalist ticket-splitters weigh their national and regional electoral choices differently: While in the national arena ideology is the main predictor of electoral behavior, at the regional level ticket-splitters tend to cross ideological lines and vote based on the performance of regional politicians or a preference for local leaders. On the other hand, interblock ticket-splitters seem to balance their votes ideologically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows the existence of a coordination dilemma in multi-level countries that hold elections for different parliaments, at different territorial levels, and with different electoral rules. With evidence from Spain, our analysis identifies interaction or contamination effects between national and sub-national electoral arenas that generate, just as in most mixed-member electoral systems, a centrifugal force that increases the number of electoral parties in national elections. The incentives that solve this coordination dilemma faced by small regional or local parties are theoretically discussed and empirically tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]