The influence of the new identities on political activity during the political and electoral cycle from 2015 to 2019 in Spain

Abstract

Since the emergence of los indignados in 2011, identification has been subject to recurrent debates and questioning at different levels. New political identities, propitiated by the development of post-materialist values, have managed to permeate the Spanish socio-political scene, both in the institutions, observable in changes in voting patterns and the rise of new political formations, and in the streets, flooded by feminists every 8th March. Despite its socio-political implications, political identification has scarcely been the subject of empirical analysis in Spain, so this paper aims to study the evolution of political identification and its effect on voting and other forms of non-conventional political participation. This study has been carried out through a descriptive and multivariate analysis using CIS data from 2015 to 2019. The main results reveal a growing influence of new political identities, especially among women and youth, as well as among left-wing voters with higher purchasing power and those more involved in politics. The materialist-post-materialist axis represents a new field of socio-political polarisation and a useful tool in sociology to deal with phenomena that are hard to explain through the traditional left-right axis, while opening a new field of relevant analysis.