Emotions in politics to understand the undecided vote in a polarization scenario
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31637/epsir-2025-1537Keywords:
undecided vote, elections, voting intention, emotions, political polarisation, survey, political ideology, SpainAbstract
Introduction: We will address the issue of emotions in politics and their role as an explanatory model of the behavior of the undecided vote in pre-electoral times. It is about understanding the importance of emotions in politics and seeing the impact they have in a context of political polarization. Methodology: A survey was carried out on 395 individuals who claimed to be in the undecided vote position for the next elections in Spain. The method used for this study was multivariate analysis. Specifically, it was decided to create a regression model that relates positive and negative emotions to voting intention. Results: The results have shown that negative emotions (distrust, irritation or boredom) have been shown to be more powerful when explaining voting options in people who positioned themselves as undecided when voting in Spain. Another significant result has been that left-wing parties align themselves with positive emotions when explaining their vote while right-wing parties align themselves with negative emotions when explaining their vote. Discussion: Other studies show the importance of negative emotions in the articulation of voting decisions, but there are no studies that show data on how the modeling of negative emotions activates undecided voting in a radicalized political context. Conclusions: Negative emotions are encouraging to motivate the undecided vote in a scenario of political polarization.
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