Before the explosion of television and social media as true electoral agents, election campaigns were basically run through rallies. Attendance was the main gauge of electoral hopes. How many campaigns have turned things around through repeated huge turnouts for electoral events! All of that has today passed into memory, as we go to the opposite extreme. Parties choose as their rally of the day one where they're badly received due to the political position they champion and they sell it as an act of freedom and bravery.
Then they won't return during the four years of the legislature, nor will they present any parliamentary initiatives to improve the quality of life of the place's citizens. It's all electoral marketing and, if played well on TV and social media, the idea spreads that their politicians are true titans when, in reality, more often than not, they're imprudent and incendiary. Albert Rivera has this Sunday repeated in Errenteria the play he made a few weeks again with his visit to Altsasu in an election event where the most numerous attendees were Ertzaintza (Basque police) agents and journalists, as there weren't even a hundred of his supporters.
There he got up on a stage, talked about freedom, denigrated independence supporters, said he'll change electoral law so that parties who don't get 3% of the vote in Spain as a whole can't enter the Congress. He also reminded them, a number of times, he'll end the Basque Country's special economic rights. Obviously, Cs doesn't have any seats in the Basque Country, but it makes up for those lost votes in the rest of Spain with a lot of TV and strong social media campaigns.
Before, people did politics, or at least they tried to; now they opt directly for anti-politics.