A moral or class divide for populist parties? ‘The people’ in the discourse of Podemos and Vox in Spain

Do populist parties refer to class identities in their discourses or do they, as most populism literature assumes, mainly highlight a moral distinction between ‘people’ and the ‘elite’? To explore these questions, this research uses dictionary-based methods and discourse analysis to identify the various ways to reconstruct such identities in Spanish populist left (Podemos) and right (Vox) political parties between 2014 and 2023. Our findings reveal that both the populist left and populist right politicise class divisions as much as moral divides, even more so in the case of the left. Moreover, we observe significant differences in the class identities mobilised by Podemos and Vox and their evolution over time.