La ideología liberal y la participación electoral en España (2010-2020): el comportamiento diferencial del votante liberal

Abstract

This article makes a first approximation to the electoral participation of liberals in Spain. Using the CIS monthly barometers and covering the period of a decade from 2010 to 2020, we analyze whether liberal ideology has influenced electoral participation. The logistic regression analyses employed include ideology in addition to other socioeconomic, attitudinal and conjunctural aspects as control variables. The results show that liberal voters have a lower electoral participation that is directly attributed to their ideological affiliation. For the elections studied, the differential behavior associated with liberal ideology is robustly maintained even after the self-placement on the left-right axis —namely, the metric traditionally used to approximate the effect of ideology— is included in the model. This greater abstentionism associated with liberal ideology does not seem to be entirely explained by the greater distrust in political institutions that these voters tend to show.