ECPR

Install the app

Install this application on your home screen for quick and easy access when you’re on the go.

Just tap Share then “Add to Home Screen”

Investigating European, National and Regional Identities in the Context of the 2023 Spanish National Election Using VAA Data

Cleavages
Regionalism
Representation
Voting
Identity
Experimental Design
Survey Experiments
Voting Behaviour
Vasileios Manavopoulos
University of Cyprus
Vasileios Manavopoulos
University of Cyprus

Abstract

We appear to be in a period where nationalist sentiment is re-emerging as a determining factor in major elections, while skepticism toward supranational institutions among citizens continues to grow. This paper attempts to explore such sentiments by measuring prospective voters’ sense of European, national and regional identities and the relationship between them using data from a Voting Advice Application (VAA), an online platform providing voters with measures of closeness to political parties contesting an election, after users declare their agreement or disagreement on policy-related questions. The specific VAA in question, “Decidir23JJ”, was designed and conducted for the Spanish general election of 2023, ultimately collecting roughly a quarter of a million responses across the country. Among other questions, the VAA included three 10-point scales requesting that users report how well three adjectives describe themselves: European, Spanish, or their regional identity (“comunidad autónoma”). We employ Cluster Analysis independently within the country’s roughly 50 provinces to attempt an examination of the degree to which these different identities can be in accord or are in conflict, obtaining different patterns of responding indicating different identity types (mixed, oriented toward the nationalism and its corollary anti-nationalist type, indifferent etc.). Subsequently, we describe how these are distributed among the population, particularly within population segmentations such as ubran/rural and the possible relationships with more concrete attitudes and behaviours, such as preferences for a change in the present organizational/administrative territorial arrangement of the country and vote intention.