Sad, angry, anxious voters: Emotions and the electoral success of the far right in Spain

The literature on emotions and far-right vote revolves around the role of anger (Marcus et al., 2019; Vasilopoulos & Lachat, 2018; Vasilopoulos et al., 2019 a & b; Marcus, 2021; Erisen & Vasilopopulou, 2022). Currently, only a few works revindicate the role of fear or anxiety as a leading cause for far-right electoral support (Jost, 2019), despite its potential effect on opinion and vote change, according to the original Affective Intelligence Theory (Marcus et al. 2000; Steenbergen and Ellis 2006). Empirical evidence against the effects of fear and anxiety on electoral support for the far right also goes against the efforts of these parties to securitize national political issues, which could partly explain their success in Europe (Kinnvall, 2014). Furthermore, the range of objects that are considered as potential triggers of emotions has been often limited to immigration (e.g. Erisen & Vasilopoulou, 2022) and leaders (e.g. Gulías, Castro & Colomé, 2022). In this paper, we expand the pool of possible emotional reactions to include some obliterated ones (e.g. sadness, hope) alongside more classic ones (anxiety, anger), positing that anxiety might be a driver of vote change in favor of far-right parties. Furthermore, we address the role of three emotional triggers that have seldom been considered in relation to right-wing voting: the economic situation, the most important problem (MIP) and the notion of politics itself. Finally, we take into account the role of emotional stability as a possible driver for voting behavior change in favor of the far right, testing the assumption that more volatile individuals are more prone to switch their vote in that direction, regardless the valence of their emotions. For this purpose, we refer to the Spanish case, where a far right-wing party (Vox) went from naught to be the third national party between 2013 and 2019. More specifically, we use nine waves of a Spanish panel that allow us to track individual changes in voting intention between 2014 and 2023 and, more interestingly, the effect of emotional changes (towards the economic situation, the Most Important Problem, and politics itself) in shifts benefitting Vox. A series of fixed-effects models confirm the positive effect of anger caused by the economic situation on potential support for Vox, but the same positive effect is observed for sadness. The role of emotions turns out to differ depending on the nature of the “most important problem”: while anger towards public health decreases the chances of considering voting for Vox, anxiety triggered by the same problem boosts the chances to vote for Vox. Finally, we also unveil the role of emotional stability, showing that emotionally stable individuals are less prone to change their electoral behavior to support Vox.