The Meaning of Silent: When People Choose Not to Answer

The question of the territorial organization of the state is one around which there are huge debates in Spain, with clear ideological and territorial divides. It is our hypothesis that when citizens are asked about embarrassing questions, and this on the territorial organization of Spain is one of those, they choose their answer taking into account more than their plain preferences. Therefore a non-answer might reflect an explicit strategy which is more related to contextual considerations, a kind of self-censorship, than it is to actual ignorance or lack of opinion. This proposal tries to cover those meanings using survey data from the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research. In particular three studies carried out in 2005, 2010 and 2012 where a question on the preference over the territorial organization of the state is included. These three studies have representative sub-samples for each of the 17 Autonomous Regions in Spain, and will allow us to analyze different hypotheses regarding not just individual characteristics but also contextual elements, such as the percentages of particular preferences, the polarization of citizens’ preferences, the politicization of identities by political parties on particular regions, etc. There aren’t more current databases with representative sub-samples, which will allow us to carry out a multilevel analysis based on cross-section polled data. To do so, contextual elements pertaining to each of the Autonomous Regions will be built up into the cross-section polled database.