Autonomy or Independence: An Analysis of the 2010 Catalan Regional Election

Abstract

This paper analyzes voting for nationalist parties, Convergència i Unió (CiU), Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), and Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència (SI), as well as the nonnationalist Ciutadans-Partit de la Ciutadania in the 2010 Catalan autonomous election with data from the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) postelection survey. It uses the multistage explanatory model of voting behavior to show that nationalist voting can be explained by long-term factors, notably being from Catalonia, as well as short-term variables such as evaluations of the incumbent governments at the central and regional levels. The analysis finds that long-term variables explain more of the vote than short-term political and economic evaluations. It presents typical profiles of voters of the major nationalist parties and of Ciutadans. Finally, this paper shows simulations of voting probabilities given changing political and economic contexts. It shows that the nationalist vote of native Catalans is more resistant to changing evaluations than that of nonnative Catalans. This implies that the challenge posed to the Spanish State of the Autonomies by Catalan nationalism is relatively enduring regardless of the short-term economic and political contexts.