Interest, media use, and participation in the 2019 Spanish election campaign.

Abstract

This work analyzes the relationships between interest in the campaign for the 2019 Spanish general elections, the type of media used to follow it, and participation through conversations, disseminating electronic messages about the elections, and voting. A secondary data analysis of surveys published by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research (CIS) is carried out. The existence of relationships between the variables is determined by using the chi-squared hypothesis test, while the strength of the associations is measured by means of the Cramér´s V and the contingency coefficient. Trends are examined by analyzing the conditioned relative frequencies. The results show a strong association between interest in the campaign and the type of medium chosen to obtain information. Likewise, there is a remarkable relationship between the interest of voters and their participation in conversations, especially in family environments, and in the dissemination of digital information about the elections. In contrast, the candidates´ arguments and pledges are not significantly related to the reason for voting. Similarly, demographic variables are weakly related with interest in the campaign, following it on the media, and participation by voting, with educational level being the only characteristic exhibiting moderately strong associations.