SPANISH POLITICIANS' POPULARITY ON YOUTUBE BEFORE AND DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

On March 14, 2020, the Government of Spain declared a state of alarm intending to stop the
expansion of Covid-19. The measures lasted for three months until reaching the so-called “new
normal.” Spanish citizens, besides staying informed through traditional media, have viewed political
audiovisual content on YouTube during the pandemic, giving more preference to some politicians
than others. This research uses YouTube search data to compare the popularity of the four politicians
with the highest voting intention in Spain: Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), Pablo Casado (PP), Santiago
Abascal (VOX) and Pablo Iglesias (Podemos) before and during the pandemic. The results show a
trend change in the popularity of Spanish politicians. While before the health crisis Santiago Abascal,
got the best search average (14.7), after the state of alarm Pedro Sánchez, current president of the
government, is the most wanted politician (7.3), followed closely by Pablo Iglesias (6.9), vice
president of the government. The regression analysis shows that there is no significant correlation
between any of the politicians during the pandemic period. We conclude that the Covid-19 pandemic,
to date, has increased the popularity on YouTube of those politicians that are in the government and
have penalized those who are in opposition (Casado and Abascal). Also noteworthy is the low
correlation between the searches for Pablo Iglesias and Pedro Sánchez on YouTube (R² = 0.0008)
during the pandemic, suggesting that both politicians use very different communication strategies in
the media, despite governing together.