Online parties and political strategies in ageing societies: the case of Castille & Leon

In February 2022 there were regional elections in the Spanish region of Castille & Leon. This region opened a new electoral momentum since a new electoral cycle begun, with the radical right wing party VOX having great hopes on it, as they strongly emerge as an electoral alternative to mainstream political parties. In a different sense, the other newcomers, Podemos -stablished since the 2014 European elections- and Ciudadanos - jumped from Catalonia in 2015 to ran in every Spanish region- saw their electoral support in decay, as they were not able to manage the expectative when reaching government or electoral coalitions. These three political parties show a different pattern in political communication as they intensively use social network as a mechanism of ‘everyday campaign’ and even their voting systems and organization extensively use web platforms. This use of social networks and communication strategies faces one of the most ageing societies in Spain -26.1% of the population is over 65 years-old- and in Europe, and the region with lesser internet coverage in the country -less than 65% of territorial of FTTH coverage-. These two elements actively clashed against the electoral strategy that the aforementioned parties might have. In this paper, our aim is to analyse the use of social network by all the political parties and political leaders, connecting it to the ageing situation, the rural depopulation, and the access to internet. The objective is to check whether there has been a change in the electoral strategies of those political parties with a higher online presence.