When protest matters electorally. The sociodemographic and political profile of demonstrators against the Iraq war

Abstract

This paper analyses the socio-demographic profile and the political attitudes and behaviours of participants in the 15th of February of 2003 demonstration against the Iraq war. We aim to respond to three questions: who demonstrated? ¿which were the motivations for doing so? and ¿which were the electoral implications of the Iraq issue from the perspective of demonstrators? Our answers to these questions are framed within those explanations of the normalization of protest activity in representative democracies and its implications in electoral terms that point out to the existence of a shift towards an individualization of politics, reflected in, among other symptoms, the weakening of party anchored voting and increasing relevance of issue voting.