Health salience before and after the pandemic: a regional party manifestos analysis

In which sense has there been a change in the way parties address health after the COVID-19 pandemic? This is the main question that this chapter tries to answer. To do that, a regional party manifesto analysis is made, using Spanish regional elections as a case of study. Through manual coding, more than 60 party manifestos (pre and post COVID-19) are analyzed. We take into account two dimensions: the importance given to the health section in each manifesto and the topics addressed within them, measuring their emphasis. The results give some counter-intuitive data. On the one hand, we show that it’s difficult to find the impact of the pandemic on the importance that parties give to health. On the other hand, we also find that there are no big variations in the proposals made. This tendency is observed controlling also by ideology; which is not an explanatory variable, neither before nor after.