Where has everyone gone? Depopulation and voting behaviour in Spain

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• dc.contributor.author Sánchez-García, Álvaro
• dc.contributor.author Rodon i Casarramona, Antoni
• dc.contributor.author Delgado i Garcia, Maria
• dc.date.accessioned 2024-09-20T06:22:54Z
• dc.date.available 2024-09-20T06:22:54Z
• dc.date.issued 2025
• dc.date.updated 2024-09-20T06:22:54Z
• dc.description Includes supplementary materials for the online appendix.
• dc.description.abstract In many European countries, people increasingly leave rural or small municipalities to live and work in urban or metropolitan environments. Although previous work on the 'left behind' places has examined the relationship between the rural-urban divide and vote choice, less is known about how depopulation affects electoral behaviour. Is there a relationship between experiencing a loss in population and support for the different parties? We investigate this question by examining the Spanish case, a country where the topic of depopulation has become a salient issue in political competition. Using a newly compiled dataset, we also explore whether the relationship between depopulation and electoral returns is moderated by municipality size, local compositional changes, the loss of public services and changes in amenities. Our findings show that depopulated municipalities give higher support to the main Conservative party, mainly in small municipalities. Yet, municipalities on the brink of disappearance are more likely to give larger support to the far-right. Results overall show that the effect of depopulation seems to be driven by compositional changes, and not as a result of losing public services or a deterioration of the vibrancy of the town. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of the relationship between internal migration and electoral behaviour.
• dc.description.sponsorship Support for this research was provided by the POLGEO project (PID2020-119465GB-C21) "Geography, polarization and the rural-urban divide in the XXI century" (Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities).
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Sánchez-García Á, Rodon T, Delgado-García M. Where has everyone gone? Depopulation and voting behaviour in Spain. Eur J Polit Res. 2025 Feb;64(1):296-319. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.12702
• dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12702
• dc.identifier.issn 0304-4130
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/61189
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher Wiley
• dc.relation.ispartof European Journal of Political Research. 2025 Feb;64(1):296-319
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/2PE/PID2020-119465GB-C21
• dc.rights © 2024 The Author(s). European Journal of Political Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• dc.subject.keyword Political geography
• dc.subject.keyword Public services
• dc.subject.keyword Depopulation
• dc.subject.keyword Far-right
• dc.subject.keyword Spain
• dc.title Where has everyone gone? Depopulation and voting behaviour in Spain
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion