The hidden radical right populism in Spain

Spain presents an exceptional case since, contrary to many other European countries including Greece and Italy in Southern Europe, the context of rising immigration and later the Great Recession did not lead to the establishment of a Radical Right Populist Party. Populism in Spain, then, seems to be limited to the left of the ideological space (Ramiro & Gómez, 2016). Previous research mainly focused on political supply factors in order to explain this peculiarity, with an emphasis on the cleavage structure, the competition structure, and the electoral system (Alonso & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2015). The current study focuses on the demand side. First, we define and identify the Spanish citizens/voters showing characteristics that are commonly associated with radical right populists, e.g. anti-immigration, Euroscepticism, welfare chauvinism, anti-establishment attitudes (Norris, 2005; Krowel & Abts, 2007; Mudde, 2007; Oesch, 2008; Art, 2011; Koster, Achterberg, & van der Waal, 2013). In the next step, we analyse the evolution of these groups and doing so identify the context in which the potential demand for radical right populism has increased in Spain. We expect an increase in in populist attitudes among the Spanish citizens. Although the refugee crisis is not affecting Spain directly, we could expect the Great Recession to have led to the same phenomenon as in other European countries. Thirdly, their socio-demographic characteristics are analysed in order to examine whether they can be identified to be the ‘losers of globalisation’. After having investigated the characteristics of voters that can be defined as populist according to the above mentioned literature, we analyse their electoral behaviour. We identify two possible consequences. As the heterogeneity of its voters (from the centre to the extreme right) increases, we expect to find that the Popular Party (PP) is finding it increasingly difficult to continue to attract these voters as in the past. If this is the case, there may be a growing niche for a radical right populist party in Spain. In the absence of an alternative party in the right, an indicator of this phenomenon would be decreasing turnout in that specific group (Hirschman, 1970). In the absence of any phenomenon of that kind, our conclusions will reinforce the theses that focus on the supply side and, more specifically, on party competition and PP’s ability to attract a very heterogeneous group of voters, including radical right populists (Alonso & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2015). To address this research question, we will use a comparative design by systematically comparing Spain with other European countries. Therefore, in a first step we use different waves of the European Social Survey to look for the presence of populist attitudes. Secondly, using data coming from the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) we will investigate those attitudes in the Spanish electorate and the evolution and relation with their voting behaviour.