Los nuevos grupos políticos significativos en la cobertura informativa electoral

Abstract

The parliamentary elections of 2015 came as a blow to the imperfect bipartisanship set in Spain since democracy was restored ¿the rerun of the elections in 2016 did not help this phenomenon to recover too much ground¿, and this benefited, most of all, two new political groups firsttimers in an election of such geographic scope: Podemos and Ciudadanos. In this regard, and given that the media was one of the aspects in which these groups were starting from a position of greater disadvantage, the successful adaptation by the Central Elections Commission to the new political context of the regulation on electoral media coverage during the election period should be highlighted. Well, it is precisely this issue which is addressed in the current paper, with a particular emphasis on the regulatory developments introduced in 2015 for those significant political groups which, for being first-timers in specific elections, lack previous equivalent references allowing them to justify preferencial informative treatment over other candidacies. In this context, the most controversial legal aspects will be studied, making also various suggestions de lege ferenda.

Keywords

• debates and interviews
• electoral information
• electoral period
• media
• political parties