Alejandro Fernández-Roldán

Looks taken from the cantine of LSE circa 2019.

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📝Why has a Bukele-style far-right party emerged in Spain—even though VOX already exists?

In our new paper, @javierpadilla.bsky.social, @canalejoalvaro.bsky.social and I explain the unexpected rise of SALF ("Let the Party Be Over") in the 2024 EP elections:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

1/3

or something like that :)

Same here! It took so much writing, and so much rewriting. And I buy your hypothesis too :)

When I gave my first PhD writing to one of my supervisors, a philosopher, he told me, 'Alex, you write like a philosopher.' I assumed it was a compliment. It wasn't.

Just discovered that ChatGPT writes as I did during my masters (maybe even early PhD): trying to use grandiloquent words to compensate for a lack of depth in my writing(s)

Disclaimer: I like Oxford.

I never re-read the book 'All souls', by Javier Marías, but my memory of it (and the reason why I think I liked it) is because it mocked/despised a mindless fascination with some characters and traditions orbiting Oxford.

🧪How did COVID-19 affect citizens’ democratic preferences?

➡️ @cescamat.bsky.social A.Arenas A.Falcó & @jordimunoz.bsky.social find a lasting rise in technocratic preferences and a temporary bump in the willingness to sacrifice civil rights and freedoms www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #FirstView

¡Enhorabuena!

Article abstract, which says: The educational cleavage is restructuring electoral competition in many democracies, yet there has been insufficient attention on how variation in educational content affects this. In order to address this, this article combines English administrative school records with a unique representative panel of adolescents to estimate the within-individual effect of studying different subjects at school on political party preference. This analysis finds that studying arts and humanities subjects leads to greater support for socially liberal parties, whilst studying business and economics increases support for economically right-wing parties. Students who study technical subjects become more likely to support socially conservative and economically right-wing parties. These relationships between particular subjects and party support also persist into adulthood. As such, this article provides new evidence on the importance of subjects taken in secondary school for political socialisation, during the impressionable years of adolescence.

📣 NEW PAPER ALERT! 🚨

"School subject choices in adolescence affect political party support"

Just published in @wepsocial.bsky.social with @nspmartin.bsky.social and @rolandkappe.bsky.social.

doi.org/10.1080/0140...

🧵👇

Congrats!

Can banning political ideologies protect democracy? 🛡️🆚🗣️

Our (w. @valentimvicente.bsky.social) paper finds: punishing individuals might backfire. We study a West German policy banning "extreme left" individuals from working for the state.

#Democracy #PoliticalScience

🧵

url: osf.io/usqdb_v2

Does the conference name start with an E and end with P?

Al palo! 🥅

Breaking news: The CIS has finally graced my household with a telephone survey. Fieldwork meets field notes 🤓

I see, that's pretty straightforward yeah! (though I guess people will always appreciate that extra flexibility).

Thanks for the thorough answer :)

Sure! It's going to be very useful.

I have a practical Q: how does it work when covariates are interacted? Does the 'controls' parameter allow for that specification?

Very cool paper! - Pretty sure most people will adopt this check right away. And even if I'm wrong, you know Reviewer 2 will ask for it anyway 😉

Suerte!

Now you can run safely! 🏃🏻

Feel free to reach out if you're curious about any of the 3 projects!

I might be in Madrid on Friday, so maybe there's also the chance to chat in person if our research goals match; though even if not, I think I'm a friendly individual :-)

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But hey, I didn't say anything about our Bayesian Point Analyses nor the Synthetic CIS we have constructed!

To see that, polling nerds, we invite you to come to room 1A.12 on Sat, 28 Jun at 11:20. Perfect session to bounce back from a [potential] hangover! 🙃

#EPSA2025
@epsanet.bsky.social

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Certainly not to the surprise of those familiar Spanish politics, we find that since 2018 CIS systematically errs in *just* one direction: favouring government parties and allies

PS: This plot is merely to pique your interest (the cool ones to be revealed during the presentation! 🙃)

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Crucially, beyond Simple Absolute Error estimation, we provide estimates that take into account Party-Specific Margin of Error", which are not frequently used (wrong!) in the literature.

This allows us then to obtain very nuanced results through another novel lens: Excess Error (!)

Tezanos no acierta. Falla de la peor forma: siempre en una dirección La portavoz del Gobierno, Pilar Alegría, confirmó al sociólogo al frente del CIS con el argumento de que es quien “acierta en las encuestas”. Pero eso no es verdad

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Though in the media this is well documented, (see @kikollan.llaneras.es's work: elpais.com/actualidad/n...) there has not been yet an academic attempt to measure this.

We do (at least make an attempt!). And we do so through a variety of analytical approaches and two original databases. YAS!

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Moreover, CIS asks vote intention Qs, and the publication of their own polling estimates has always been controversial, often framed as an attempt to influence public opinion rather than to reflect it. + The current director is arguably the most controversial figure
to ever lead the institution

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CIS is an anomaly, and therefore a great case study ;-)

CIS is a Spanish public institute that provides valuable data for social scientists on a wide range of topics.

*BUT*: The organic dependency on the Spanish government means that the director of CIS changes with each new administration.

a penguin wearing a red hat holds a spanish flag above its head ALT: a penguin wearing a red hat holds a spanish flag above its head

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And last but not least, another piece in collaboration with @klaramueller.bsky.social, with a very local focus (Spain).

"Electoral Polling as a Public Service? The case of CIS"

PS: This is a great fit for the hardcore polling people! As we say in Spain: para los más cafeteros ☕

#EPSA2025

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We conclude that the scope of sociotropic motivations varies with the target of the measure: broader targets elicit broader sociotropic concerns, while narrower targets prompt more specific, narrowly focused motivations.

All the nuances and beautiful plots at 1A.08 - Fri, 27 Jun - 15h