El rol de la opinión pública en las elecciones autonómicas de Madrid del 22-5-2011

Abstract

The goal of this work is to analyze the Spanish media during the period previous to the autonomic elections in the Community of Madrid. The analysis focuses on some of the most important national Spanish newspapers in order to obtain a fairly complete overview of Spanish press. The following newspapers are, therefore, considered the object of study: El País, El Mundo, ABC and Público. The research spans over a period of two (2) months; the first month, from 3 September 2011 to 3 October 2011, day of primary internal elections of Psoe; the second one, from 22 April 2011 to 22 May 2011, day of the autonomic elections of Madrid.
Every article and headline in the front page and each leading article of all these newspapers published on the elections during the electoral campaign has been analyzed, focusing on the most important themes of the political campaign as well as the way they were broadcast by every single newspaper.
In this way, by comparing the research results with the electoral results, it is possible to describe how Spanish press contributed to the construction of public opinion of voters on the issues discussed as well as the thematic frameworks.
This analysis is marked, among other aspects, by one peculiarity: the 15M movement, which produced an effect in the mass media that conditioned the press production during the last days of the electoral campaign. This phenomena helped us analyze the different points of view of the above mentioned newspapers. Even more so since the movement we are talking about had no political orientation.
To conclude, we can say that the result of the election was determined by the economic issue, even though the theme that has had more influence on the media was the 15M movement. Generally talking, we could find out the key points of the main themes of the two major Spanish political parties, both committed to preparing the ground for subsequent national elections.