Elections as a fight. Analysis of the coverage of electoral polls in the media during the 2021 Catalan election campaign

Abstract

This research analyses the media coverage of electoral polls during the 2021 Catalan parliamentary election campaign on the basis of a sample of 134 news articles published by national and regional media. Through a quantitative analysis, it is presented which polls were used by the media, the most often mentioned poll, and which poll achieved the highest degree of accuracy. A framing analysis is also used to study the media’s coverage of the results of the polls. We show that the use and replicability of electoral polls is heterogeneous, and that there is a great pre-eminence of the polls of public institutions such as CIS. The results also confirm that the fight/game framing permeates all the news coverage and situates the media discourse in result-oriented scenarios that prioritise expectation and interest in the winner as a news value. This competition logic presents the polls as just one more element in the partisan fight and not as an instrument providing valuable information for public debate.