This paper simulates the effect of the strategies implemented by politicians after the terrorists attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004 on the ideological distance between voters and political parties. The attacks took place three days before the elections and changed the campaign’s agenda, which centered around the issue of who was responsible for the attack: ETA or Al Qaeda. It also altered the agenda of the mass media, which focused its informative activity on broadcasting news related to this issue. We did an exhaustive selection process of all the news broadcast on television, radio, and newspapers that made reference to the authorship of the attack. Using these messages we developed an agent-based model for explaining how the political strategies implemented by political parties influenced the ideological distance. The proposed model is based on the ideological proximity model by Downs (1957). After calibrating and validating the model with real data, we simulated the effect of three political strategies from the theory of terror management on the ideological distance between voters and political parties: the rally around the flag, the opinion leadership, and the priming of public opinion and media coverage. The results show that these strategies have a significant and stable impact on the ideological distance. In particular, the rally around the flag can have a lasting effect, capable of changing the ideological distance in the short term after a terrorist attack.

本文模拟了 2004 年 3 月 11 日马德里恐怖袭击后政治家实施的策略对选民和政党之间意识形态距离的影响。袭击发生在选举前三天，并改变了竞选议程，该议程集中在谁应对袭击负责的问题上：ETA 还是基地组织。它还改变了大众媒体的议程，将其信息活动集中在广播与此问题相关的新闻上。我们对电视、广播和报纸上所有提及攻击作者的新闻进行了详尽的选择。使用这些信息，我们开发了一个基于代理的模型，用于解释政党实施的政治策略如何影响意识形态距离。提出的模型基于 Downs (1957) 的意识形态邻近模型。在用真实数据校准和验证模型后，我们模拟了三种政治策略的效果。选民与政党意识形态距离的恐怖管理理论：围绕旗帜的集会、舆论领导、舆论和媒体报道的启动。结果表明，这些策略对意识形态距离有显着且稳定的影响。特别是，围绕旗帜的集会可以产生持久的影响，能够在恐怖袭击后的短期内改变意识形态的距离。