¿Nationalist voting? Electoral basis of AGE and En Marea in 2012 and 2016 regional elections

Abstract

In all of the (from 1981 to 2016) elections that took place in Galicia at the autonomous communitie level, the regional parties have obtained electoral representation. The evolution in the vote share for these parties could be divided in three periods. In the first one, various regionalist parties entered in the Galician Parliament employing a discourse focused on the territorial cleavage and on the regional identity. In the second period, the Galician Nationalist Block (Bloque Nacionalista Gallego) was the most relevant regionalist party. Finally, the elections that took place in 2012 —the beginning of the third period— could be considerate as the beginning of a new electoral competition: The emergence of a new party, Leftist Galician Alternative (Alternativa Galega de Esquerdas) and, in the following elections, the emergence of En Marea, had altered the Galician political competition. Both parties, with a regionalist discourse, have obtained an important number of votes, but perhaps not from regionalist voters. The aim of this work is describe the evolution of the galician regionalism, paying special attention to the third period. Thus, we are looking for the main explicative factors of vote for Alternativa Galega de Esquedas in the 2012 elections and for En Marea in 2016.