The research group in Elections and Public Opinion of the Universitat de València, GIPEyOP, led by the lecturer in Applied Economics José M. Pavia, have undertaken a study on the influence of the media on the citizens when voting. The research, published in the journal Contemporary Social Sciences, concludes that the published surveys are the main source used by the electorate to configure their added expectations; and that the interpreting and the projection of the reality of the electorate is not neutral, but strongly influenced by their own beliefs and preferences and by the media on which they obtain the information.
The research has been carried out on the basis of the general elections of 2015, when new parties arrived to the Parliament (Podemos and Ciudadanos) without having previous historical references. According to the study, there are two opposed scenarios that can give an explanation about how the electorate forms its added expectations. Thus, researchers have analysed which the most influencing mechanism regarding expectation formation is: published opinion or social interactions. Furthermore, the researchers have also analysed the existence of ideological bias of the electorate’s perception for the future electoral results. The results of this macro-survey (14.262 citizen) carried out by this group has the evidence to prove different points. Firstly, it has been proved that the surveys published by the media are the main source used by the electorate in order to configure their added expectatives (at least nationally and provincially); and secondly, it has been proved that the interpreting and projection of the reality made by the electorate is not neutral, but strongly influenced by their own beliefs and preferences and by the media on which they obtain the information.
The lecturer Pavía explains that ‘the results which we obtained are absolutely interesting and, in fact, we have delved into this research line. We have carried out a new research and now we are writing down the results. In this last research, we have gone further and, from an experiment developed in the LINEX, we can appreciate that the surveys and, to a minor extent, the social interaction also have influence on the decision of the electorate. Our wish would be to obtain the support in order to test these results in other natural and experimental areas where the constraints were different.’