TikTok and Instagram, Vox's strongholds (not the PP's): the battle for the right-wing youth vote

MadridVox leader Santiago Abascal has around 820,000 followers on TikTok, while the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, does not have an account on the social network. On Instagram, the leader of the far-right party has 1.2 million followers, surpassing the PP leader by more than a million, who has around 184,000. "This is the key to understanding why Vox attracts young people while the PP does not," Xavier Torrens, professor of political science at the University of Barcelona (UB), told ARA. According to the second 2025 wave of the political opinion barometer from the Center for Opinion Studies (CEO), social media is the primary source of daily political information for young people between 18 and 24 years old, and the platforms they use most are YouTube, where Vox has almost 500,000 more followers than the PP. "[In the far-right party] they know that the main impact, and especially on the younger demographic, is no longer traditional media but primarily TikTok and Instagram. Vox has known how to use these tools better than the rest of the parties," Torrens adds.

The July barometer of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) confirms the electoral gains that the far right is reaping among voters aged 18 to 24. Vox is the party with the greatest support among this age group, and Abascal is the leader they say they prefer as president of the Spanish government. 25.1% of respondents in this age group say that in the next elections they would vote for Vox, which would surpass the PP by more than ten points, which is the second choice among younger people with 14.1%. The Popular Party only puts itself first among those aged 45 and over, and among those who would like Feijóo as president, it puts him first among those aged 55 and over. Young people aged 18 to 24, once again, are the ones who express the greatest support for Abascal, who is the preferred candidate for number 5, while the preferred candidate for number 2 attracts only 6.6%.

In the press conference to review the political year given by the PP leader in the last week of July, he briefly referred to young people and his concerns for their future, but the message was not followed up on the PP's social media channels. What the PP shared were several video fragments from other parts of the speech. In a conversation with this newspaper, political communication and social media consultant Xavier Tomàs points out that, beyond the content of the messages, posts that consist of "rehashing lectures" are not effective in capturing attention on social media and can even have "the opposite effect." "Politicians must adapt to communicating with a language, pace, and format adapted to young people," he emphasized, adding that it will also be more effective for older groups who increasingly use social media and will also be more attracted to videos adapted to the new communication codes. "Not only the PP, but the rest of the parties seem to have given up the battle, not because they've lost, but because they haven't really shown up," says Tomàs, who adds that the far right, on the other hand, "has understood this immediately."

That same week, Vox, which posted almost three times as many Instagram posts as the PP, posted a dynamic video—in a format used by many of its leaders—of the far-right party's national youth spokesperson and member of Parliament, Júlia Calvet, boasting about the increase in support among the group she represents. reel has more than double likes than Feijóo's. Tomàs emphasizes the importance of the person conveying the message being a young person who resembles the target audience. In the case of the PP, the leader who had the most followers on social media and who published the most content with this type of language was Noelia Núñez, who is recently resigned for falsifying his resume.

The 33-year-old former vice-secretary of digital challenges has more followers on Instagram than Feijóo and, from time to time, she would do something that the political consultant believes is necessary to "change the chip" and increase citizen inclusion, such as explaining the debates held or the measures approved at headquarters by reusing interventions before the media.

The PP's "non-appearance"

The People's Party (PP) has opted not to replace Noelia Núñez and has eliminated the deputy secretary of digital challenges headed by the former MP in Congress. Ester Muñoz, recently appointed PP spokesperson in the lower house, doesn't even have a TikTok account, and she has 29,600 followers on Instagram. Tomàs argues that parties should consider whether spokespersons are only spokespersons for the press and defends that citizens, through social media, also "have the right to interact" with tools such as, for example, Instagram live broadcasts. Looking ahead to the next electoral cycle, which is expected to begin with the elections in Castilla y León in early 2026, the PP leadership in this territory assumes that Vox has won the battle among young people and is focusing its efforts on promoting measures aimed at voters between 35 and 65 years old.

Torrens maintains that it is realistic to think that "in the short term they cannot change this trend" and that it makes sense to focus on age groups that also represent a larger number of voters, but warns that this predominance of Vox among young people and on social networks can be "worrying" for the rest of the parties.