The rise of Vox and populism on YouTube before and during the Covid-19 pandemic

YouTube is one of the platforms most used by young people for viewing audiovisual content on the Internet. Although several recent studies analyze the trends in searches for political videos on YouTube, there is no study that analyzes the evolution of the popularity of Spanish political parties on this social network. For this research we will use a quantitative and qualitative methodology based on data from the Google Trends platform in order to find out the evolution of the popularity of these parties on YouTube before and during the pandemic. The results place Vox (7.6) as the most searched party on YouTube over the last ten years, followed by United We Can (6.3), PSOE (4.4) and PP (3.5). In the period of the pandemic, Vox increased its popularity (15.3) and the Popular Party came in second place (4.2). We performed a statistical analysis to compare the most searched match on YouTube with the rest of the matches in both periods. The regression analysis of searches between "Vox" and "PP" during the last decade was R-2 = 0.51 and during the period of the pandemic R-2 = 0.15. The correlation of "Vox" with the other parties in was R <0.06 in both periods. We conclude that Vox has become the most sought after match on YouTube during the Covid-19 pandemic, a social network used mainly by young people. Factor that determines the recent success of a party that some authors associate with a populist discourse.