Once more, with feeling! digital campaigns and emotional candidacies in X in Andalusia and Castilla y León

Abstract

In 2022, two regional elections were held that initiated a new electoral cycle in Spain. The first, in February, took place in Castilla y León where, for the first time, the extreme right-wing party, VOX, formed a coalition in a regional government with the right-wing Partido Popular, while, simultaneously, the extreme left-wing party Podemos was barely left with parliamentary representation. The second, in June in Andalusia, led to VOX increasing its representation by two seats and beginning its national level electoral growth; the far-left that was split in two parties, finding that the dynamic that began in Castilla y León also affected them as they lost 10 representatives. This article seeks to compare the emotional strategies of these extremist parties in the 2022 regional elections, focusing especially on leaders’ and parties’ communication strategies on X, formerly Twitter, during the electoral campaign. We expect to find differences between political parties but also between regions. To test this, we carried out an ‘X account content analysis’. We selected those accounts representing the candidates to the regional President and also the main political party accounts in the regions: namely VOX in both regions, Podemos in Castilla y León, and Adelante Andalucía and Por Andalucía in Andalusia.