Does any voter in Spain watch all the propaganda?

Newsletter: And what is the point in 2022 of election debates with half the parties people might want to vote for missing?

The official regional election campaign in Castilla y León begins tomorrow. All the parties have already been on their media campaigns for several days. They have multiplied the intensity of their social media messaging by ten. Candidates appear around every TV corner, if possible with cows or sheep or horses in the background, so that people know they are rural types, and can be trusted in the countryside with tractors and mud. Even if they are dressed up like a winter-collection catalogue. I don't know what the people who live in cities in Castilla y León must think, or if the country narrative up there is strong enough to win them over anyway.

Rufián (Esquerrfa) launches his "interview" show on YouTube a while ago now. Errejón (Más País) started a Twitch channel. Now Pablo Iglesias (Podemos) wants to become a "crticial journalist" to keep attacking the right from the left with a podcast and Twitter. The PSOE has joined Twitch. Vox, as well as enjoying makeing epic campaign videos, with epic music and cinema-like slow-motion shots that turn any street in Spain into a scene out of Gladiator, is going to launch a "programme" on Sunday with rural chats. They are going to call it "Sileneced Spain". It will be on their YouTube channel. Abascal, cows and countryside.

Are there any voters left anywhere in Spain that see, or try to see, all the propaganda parties pump out on all of their media channels every day of an election campaign? I doubt the answer is yes. So in that case, who are the parties talking to all the time? Do they think a random tweet or video clip will be enough to convince the odd swing voter? Or that the soundbites from their candidates on the lunchtime news, cows in the background, will do the job? And what is the point in 2022, in this tsunami-like, very immediate media environment, of holding election debates with half of the parties people might want to vote for this year left out because four years ago they didn't win enough seats to get their own group in parliament?

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