Political leadership is an interactive phenomenon, a process through which a person (the leader) influences the other (the follower/s) to obtain a certain result. In this study we try to check the influence that leaders have on a particular aspect: the voting behaviour. We choose to analyze a specific set of elections: the regional elections held in Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country in the years 2009 and 2010. There are several reasons for this: first, there is a strong nationalist feeling in these regions that influences both the vote and the system of political parties; a second point is the fact that the election’s result has been a change of government. The leaders’ influence will be verified through the analysis of public opinion, as is reflected in periodic surveys, with a special emphasis put on the pre and post-electoral ones, in which some questions about the candidates were asked. We will check the ways in which the leader influences the voting decision.
