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Title. The Power of Words: Economic Conditions, Political Discourse, and Support for Populism.

Abstract. We study the relationship between economic conditions, political discourse, and electoral support for populist parties. Our analysis focuses on the rise of the Spanish far-right party Vox, which gained significant support during a period of economic recovery. Combining administrative labor market records, congressional speeches, social media data, and nationally representative opinion surveys, our analysis proceeds in two stages. First, using a shift-share approach, we show that the distributional composition of local employment growth predicts changes in support for Vox at the municipality level. Second, we show that Vox strategically targets its discourse by topic and region, and that this targeting causally shifts citizen concerns regarding current Spanish issues. Our results suggest that electoral success depends not only on economic fundamentals but also on the supply of narratives that shape citizen perceptions of economic change.