Spanish elections and politics III / Pedro Sánchez faces a new term as PM

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Pedro Sanchez announces snap elections for 23rd of July!

That was not on my bingo card.

That wasn't in anyone's card

No doubt Pedro Sánchez is an audacious man. Jesus Christ

Perhaps he's betting that the left will get its act together if this is how urgent the situation is.

If nothing else it will concentrate minds while the lesson is fresh. I’m not sure the far left are in the mood for learning though.

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First poll after the local elections and the announcement of snap general elections:

Worth pointing out that this is by far PSOE's worst pollster - this is basically no change on their last poll (last week of April) which had:
PP - 32.8%
PSOE - 21.2%
Sumar+Podemos - 15.8%
Vox - 15.7%
Cs - 2.1%


Data10/OKDiario is generally an outlier in being slightly better than average for the PP and far worse than average for PSOE, while CIS is an outlier in being very good for PSOE and very bad for Vox.

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Any news on if Sumar and Podemos will run on the same list or separately?  Don't they have to decide this week?

Not yet. The deadline is Friday, though if an agreement is reached they have a little longer to put the actual lists together.

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What happens in case      176 >  (PP + VOX)  > (PSOE + Sumar)  ?

I always assumed that in such a case it will be PSOE + Sumar government with outside support from the anti-VOX regional parties.

Depends how close PP + Vox are to 176; if it's a question of just a few votes they could probably form an agreement with someone (the Canarian Coalition?), but if there's a large amount of support they need to make up it might be easier for PSOE. There could also be new elections; Sánchez remains in power in an acting capacity until a government is actually formed.

And also the makeup of 'Others'. Junts and the CUP are obviously going to vote against PP / Vox, but are unlikely to be much help to the left block either for example.

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Map of the change in PSOE vote. Annoyingly I think El País treated null / blank votes a little differently in the two elections, but it still gives you the basic picture.

In terms of the main patterns:
- Remarkably good performance in Cataluña, explained by nationalist voters both abstaining and switching directly to the PSE.
- Also a strong night in the Basque Country. This is less obviously explicable, but it's probable that the 'Vox card' worked well in the non-Castilian areas.
- Good results in Valencia and the Balearics are probably due to far-left unity. Popular regionalists ran alone last time (or with Más Madrid), whereas this time they joined with Sumar. It looks like many of their voters went to PSOE instead.
- The big increase in Cantabria is down to the left leaning regionalists not defending their seat, while in Melilla the collapse of Coalición por Melilla (a Muslim party hit recently by corruption scandals) benefitted the left.
- A strong increase in the Canaries is matched by a poor result there for Sumar, but the reasons for this aren't entirely obvious to me.
- A poor night in Galicia, where Feijóo got a favoured son vote (also worth noting that Sumar leader Díaz is Gallega, but this doesn't appear to have shown up in the results), and the left leaning Galician nationalists have improved, though possibly by less than expected.
- Drift to the right in Andalucía continues to be a bit of a problem for the Socialists.
- The good result in Teruel can be explained by the fall of Teruel Existe, while the big fall in Soria is due to the intervention of Soria Ya.

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When are the votes from Spaniards abroad (CERA) countes? I think I read they tend to favor the left so could that change a seat or two?

I believe they are only included in the 'escrutinio definitivo' between 28-31 July.

I don't know how many are expected though? There would have to be quite a few to change the outcome in any one province.

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When are the votes from Spaniards abroad (CERA) countes? I think I read they tend to favor the left so could that change a seat or two?

I believe they are only included in the 'escrutinio definitivo' between 28-31 July.

I don't know how many are expected though? There would have to be quite a few to change the outcome in any one province.

Here are the number of votes by constituency from 2019: http://www.juntaelectoralcentral.es/cs/jec/documentos/GENERALES_2019_ResultadosVotoCERA2_Congreso.pdf

The only provinces where the number of votes needed to change the result is lower than the number of CERA ballots in 2019:
Girona, Cantabria, Tarragona, Madrid, Salamanca, Guipuzkoa, Malaga

Of those, the only one that looks like a plausible change is Madrid (which would be a PP gain from PSOE).

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When are the votes from Spaniards abroad (CERA) countes? I think I read they tend to favor the left so could that change a seat or two?

I believe they are only included in the 'escrutinio definitivo' between 28-31 July.

I don't know how many are expected though? There would have to be quite a few to change the outcome in any one province.

Here are the number of votes by constituency from 2019: http://www.juntaelectoralcentral.es/cs/jec/documentos/GENERALES_2019_ResultadosVotoCERA2_Congreso.pdf

The only provinces where the number of votes needed to change the result is lower than the number of CERA ballots in 2019:
Girona, Cantabria, Tarragona, Madrid, Salamanca, Guipuzkoa, Malaga

Of those, the only one that looks like a plausible change is Madrid (which would be a PP gain from PSOE).

CERA was made easier and participation went up a lot.
Also, PP will not gain anything from PSOE in CERA because CERA is very left wing

Is there any evidence that participation has increased a lot (certainly it stands to reason given the changes, but do we have anything beyond anecdote)?

As for it being left wing, that is a generalisation. As you can see from the spreadsheet I posted, the PP+Cs vote in 2019 was 2.5k higher than that of the PSOE in the CERA vote.

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And a look at the change in Sumar vote, firstly compared to the combined vote of their predecessors (Podemos + Más País + CHA + Més + Compromís), and secondly compared to the Podemos vote.

- After years of infighting (which Podemos leader Ione Belarra looks like she wants to repeat if her performance yesterday is anything to go by), it is clear that Díaz's strategy to achieve left unity saved the furniture for the left. Areas where an ally had run in 2019 were some of the worst in terms of performance compared with 'potential', as voters leaked to PSOE, but the best in terms of performance compared with Podemos. Even a small Más País style split, never mind Podemos running alone, would probably have meant disaster for the far left in this election.
- Some of the patterns in the first map are similar to those in the PSOE map, due to what was going on in other parties: Teruel, Melilla, Cantabria, Soria.
- The same goes for Cataluña, where the nationalist collapse helped prop up Sumar, particularly in Girona where they saved a very vulnerable seat.
- The inclusion of Compromís did lead to small increases on Podemos' performance in 2 of the 3 Valencian provinces (though not enough to save the seat in Castellón), but the level of transfer was very low and must come as a disappointment. It's clear that many left-leaning voters in this Autonomous Community went PSOE this time.
- The same was true to an even greater extent in the Balearic Islands, where the Sumar result was simply abysmal. With the addition of strong allies they should have been looking to gain a seat, but instead they went backwards on the Podemos result and lost a seat. Obviously votes don't transfer perfectly, but I'm not sure what the causes for the scale of the failure are.
- As I wrote on the PSOE map, there was a big swing from Sumar to PSOE in the Canaries. I have no idea why.
- Like PSOE, Sumar were squeezed in Galicia by the favourite son vote for Feijóo and the good nationalist result. There was no sign of a favourite daughter vote for Díaz, though I guess it could have been even worse.
- The result in the Basque Country + Navarra was very poor (the site of 3/7 of the party's losses) as Sumar were squeezed between strong PSOE and Bildu performances.

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And now onto the changes in the PP vote. They also get two maps. The first is the change from their vote last time, the second is the change in the vote from them + Ciudadanos. The two didn't run together in 2019, but given the cannibalisation of the vote I think the second map is more illuminating. Couple of notes - the scale on the first map is different, and I have treated Navarra differently in the two maps. In the first one I have shown the PP change from the NA+ (alliance of PP, Cs and UPN) vote in 2019, in the second map I have shown the change in the combined PP+UPN vote from NA+.

- Navarra obviously stands out in the first map, which is due to UPN running alone.
- Some patterns again remain the same with other parties (big increase in Cantabria, decent one in Teruel - in the second map - and poor result in Soria)
- The results in Castilla & León were underwhelming, though they come from a relatively high base, particularly once you factor in Cs.
- There is a pattern in the second map of stronger performances where Vox did well in 2019, as the smaller party's vote was cannibalised.
- Strong increases in both African possessions.
- Very clear in both maps is the extremely strong performance in Andalucía. Just as the PSOE underwhelmed, the PP did very well. Worth noting that this isn't just a demographic shift, but something more localised, as otherwise you'd expect the same patterns in e.g. Extremadura.
- Very strong result in Galicia (much more obvious in the second map), most likely down to a vote for local boy Alberto Feijóo.
- Good increases in Madrid and Asturias, neither of which I can find a compelling explanation for (though I guess the Ayuso regional government in Madrid is mega-popular so that might have something to do with it).
- Failure to make any sort of impact in the Basque Country or Cataluña, even from a very low base. In the latter it is perhaps unsurprising that they were barely able to match the PP+Cs performance given it was Ciudadanos' home ground, but still a poor performance. The rightward shift and dalliance with Vox is clearly causing both of  these non-Castilian Autonomous Communities to diverge even further from the rest of Spain.
- The slightly weird looking mismatch between the two Canary Islands provinces is due to Vox failing to run a list in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

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The divergence between the two Canarian provinces is the result of Vox's list for Tenerife being disqualified.

Yep, just realised that myself.

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And finally, Vox. The most obvious pattern here is that they lost more voteshare where they did best in 2019, but there are a couple of other things to note.

- The poor result in Andalucía is part of the pattern noted above, but it's also clear that they as well as PSOE fell victim to the PP overperformance here.
- The massive fall in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is due to not running a list, but the increase in Las Palmas is interesting. Combined with overperformances for PSOE and underperformances for the PP and Sumar, it looks like the Canaries just decided to do their own thing.
- Increasing their (admittedly mostly paltry) voteshares in Cataluña and the Basque Country, combined with lacklustre PP showings in the same areas, probably indicates that a fair proportion of the remaining hardcore 'constitutionalist' Ciudadanos voters switched over to Vox this time.
- The result in Galicia doesn't stand out on the map, but is quite an impressive fall given how low the Vox vote started off there, and again indicates that Feijóo's 'local boy' status served the PP well here.
- Though both leant left, the Vox overperformances really hit home how 'catch all' the voter bases of the PRC in Cantabria and TE in Teruel were / are.

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Catalonia is an integral part of Spain as seen by most people in Spain who are not Catalans. The number of people who are so brain-poisoned by partisan sentiment that they'd like to see a large and integral chunk of the country break away because it votes the wrong way is tiny. It's the same as in Britain: Conservatives who wish that the 2014 referendum in Scotland had gone the other way as Scotland is poor territory for the Conservatives are rather few in number, because that's just not a way of thinking that makes sense to more than a handful of people.

And somehow I think the 'Spanish unity' card which PP has used to great effect to win elections in Castilian Spain would be of somewhat of lesser value a complete joke if they allowed an area of the country (never mind one of its economic engines) to secede.

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Overseas ballots will start being counted tomorrow. There are 233,688 ballots to be counted, around 10% of the 2,3 million voters registered overseas.

So up a bit from last time (7.4%), but not terribly different.

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Overseas ballots will start being counted tomorrow. There are 233,688 ballots to be counted, around 10% of the 2,3 million voters registered overseas.

So up a bit from last time (7.4%), but not terribly different.

Yep, an increase, but not a big one. The first results are already being reported and they made no changes in the seat count: In Melilla, PP won 75 votes and PSOE 51; and in Soria PP also won with 247 votes and PSOE with 190.

There are at least 4 constituencies where there could be changes in seats: Madrid, Cantabria, Girona and Tarragona, the rest seems very difficult to have changes, although not impossible.

Where is it being reported?

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As I suspected, there are nowhere near enough vote for changes / the margins were far too large in every province outside Madrid.

There are easily enough votes for a change there, but the right will have to outperform its on the day vote (which it has done bascially nowhere so far).

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Though on votes it looks semi-plausible that Sumar could overtake Vox nationally.

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Looks like the PSOE has lost their last seat in Madrid to the PP. This means they’d need Junts to vote yes rather than abstain, and surely confirms new elections.

Edit - sounds like a recount. Must be extremely tight.

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Looks like the PSOE has lost their last seat in Madrid to the PP. This means they’d need Junts to vote yes rather than abstain, and surely confirms new elections.

Edit - sounds like a recount. Must be extremely tight.

Yeah, really surprising. Either Madrid voted like Galicia in the CERA or Sumar over performed massively at the expense of PSOE.

If PP get this seat then there is no option but to go to another election.

Sounds like a big Sumar performance (not unsurprising).

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I'm not sure I follow why PP gaining this seat means Junts needs to vote 'yes' rather than abstain?

you appear to have answered your own question:

PP/Vox/UPN = 171
PSOE/Sumar/ERC/Bildu/PNV/BNG/CC = 172
Junts = 7

I don't think the math has changed in a meaningful way regarding Junts, but PSOE now absolutely needs CC, which in my understanding is the most questionable inclusion, since they have promised not to support a government which includes Sumar or Vox. If they're serious about that, then this goes to new elections, but it could also be posturing. (With the earlier seat count, CC could've also abstained and PSOE still taken office.)

The consensus opinion seems to take their statement at face value, that they can't be persuaded to do anything more than agree to abstain (if even that, not that it matters now)

Yeah, a lot of the earlier commentary seemed to tacitly assume that CC in the left-wing column, but if they're not gettable for Sánchez even in principle then losing one seat to PP worsens his position very meaningfully.

No it didn't - CC has always been treated as outside the blocs (well, by anyone with any vague connection to reality).

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(Note that, as BK has documented, Catalonia isn't actually all that much of a problem for the Spanish right -- and in the pre-Vox days CiU had been a partner in at least one PP-led government -- but certainly Scotland is a very real problem for the British Tories. Quebec seems somewhere in between; BQ does not seem as hostile to the CPC as the SNP is to the Tories.)

Catalonia comprises about 16% of the population of Spain, whereas Scotland comprises about 8% of the United Kingdom's population.

Sure, and the difference I'm describing is partially just the product of different electoral systems, but the Spanish right derives much more of its support from Catalonia than the Tories do from Scotland. At the most recent election, 16/170 of the seats for PP/Vox came from Catalonia (about 9%), compared to 6/365 Tory seats coming from Scotland (1.6%), and that was a relatively good performance! It's much harder to cut off 10% of your party's representation than 1.6%. The 'Catalan right' is a much larger part of the Spanish system than 'the Scottish Tories'.

1) In terms of support the Conservatives are *far* more popular in Scotland than the PP are in Cataluña
2) In FPTP the 'where' is much more important. While it would be going too far to say that a Barcelona PP representative is seen the same way as a Madrid PP representative, it wouldn't be going all that far. In the UK the 'Scottish Tories' have far more of an identity (regardless of the fact that this is nonsensical - the Scottish Conservatives are spread across the same ideological spectrum as the UK Conservatives and have never (at least in recent times) voted together as a coherent group.

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https://twitter.com/Nassreddin2002/status/1685984337852870656?s=20

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What are the demographics/similarities of the places that trended left? Particularly interested in the north central provinces.

It's important to remember here that Spain's decentralisation means that Autonomous Communities are liable to swing on 'local' factors as well as national - we're obviously not talking about Canada levels of disconnected-ness, but if you're just looking at demographics then an important part of the picture is missing. As such, the similarity of the north central provinces is likely that they are part of Castilla y León rather than some demographic peculiarity (and in Cantabria the reason is clearly the fact that the PRC didn't run this time, so isn't comparing like with like - there are similar issues in Soria, Teruel, Melilla, León).

This is particularly obvious in Andalucía. As I wrote somewhere earlier in the thread, PSOE doesn't have a problem with 'demographics like those in Andalucía', it has a problem with the Andalucía Autonomous Community. It's pretty clear that a chunk of the PSOE vote here was basically built on clientelist networks which have decayed / disappeared with their loss of power in the region. Combined with a popular PP government, the local Socialist branch looks to be unsure of what to do.

Also, just to note on the trend map: this isn't actually very useful to analyse the results. It's impossible to say if Cataluña is trending left compared with Spain as a whole, because the battle is a totally different one. The PSC is gaining votes from nationalists, not from the right. Cataluña and the Basque Country (plus to a lesser extent the other provinces mentioned in the first paragraph) mean that this trend analysis doesn't really work. Maybe if nationalists were included in the left block it would be slightly more meaningful (though there'd still be other issues)?

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What are the demographics/similarities of the places that trended left? Particularly interested in the north central provinces.

This is particularly obvious in Andalucía. As I wrote somewhere earlier in the thread, PSOE doesn't have a problem with 'demographics like those in Andalucía', it has a problem with the Andalucía Autonomous Community. It's pretty clear that a chunk of the PSOE vote here was basically built on clientelist networks which have decayed / disappeared with their loss of power in the region. Combined with a popular PP government, the local Socialist branch looks to be unsure of what to do.

While I mostly agree with you, I will contest this paragraph. It is true that the collapse of PSOE has been most felt in Andalucia (which should not be disregarded in its impact, we are talking about the largest community in the country, home to about 1 in every 5 Spaniards!) but there has certainly been a decline of PSOE in "Communities with demographics similar to Andalucia", which really means 2: Extremadura and to a lesser extent, Castille-La Mancha. Both have seen a decline in the left wing vote just as severe as Andalucía's, but it's flown under the radar and isn't as reflected in regional or even local results

I should clarify - there has been a slow shift where different parts of Spain (Cataluña and País Vasco excepted) are voting more similarly to each other – so a right shift in the south and a left shift in the north – but this is unrelated to the left’s current travails in Andalucía.

Nb: There also seems to be a much stronger shift along the coast - most dramatic in Murcia, but also Almería, Alicante, Málaga - which I'm assuming is down to the growth in tourism and resort towns, but I am certainly open to other explanations.

Regarding Extremadura, do not let the 2023 party map fool you. PSOE narrowly did win Extremadura, but the right adds up to a majority there. That comes down to Sumar being pretty much irrelevant as we are talking about arguably the most rural region of Spain. However the right has clearly been gaining ground. A way of looking at it is that the 2023 regional election was the very first time the right has ever added up to a majority there. Even in the 2011 rout, PSOE and IU added to a majority, IU just decided to back PP over PSOE there.

Extremadura has been competitive at national elections for a while. It has slowly shifted right, but slowly. It was over 10% left of the country as a whole in the 80s, down to ~7% in the early noughties and ~3.5-5% since 2015. 2023 was a record low difference (1.9%) but when you consider how much Cataluña skews this (and, yes, I'm sure the PP's Castilian nationalist campaign saw them pick up support also), it isn't a major shift.

Compare this to Andalucía, which was slightly more left wing but followed a very similar trajectory until 2016 (after which they lost power regionally). Since then Andalucía has rapidly moved from 7% to the left of the nation to just 1.4% to the left. Obviously there is the same Catalan issue, but this is a much more major and obvious shift than elsewhere.

Indeed, a very surprising development of this (combined with CyL's mild trend left I mentioned earlier) is that Castille-La Mancha is now the more conservative of the two Castilles! It also sees much more support for Vox than Castille-Leon, and is apparently one of Vox's strongest regions. This in spite of CLM only ever being ruled by PP for one term (2011-15) while CyL is the exact opposite (only PSOE term being 1983-87); with PSOE's branch there even being able to withstand May's right wing landslide.

This isn't really true. Both the left and right 'blocs' did better in CLM than CyL this time (I'd have thought due to the array of fairly strong regionalists running in CyL - Soria Ya, Por Ávila, UPL) and the left outperformed by more.

The strong Vox result I think mostly comes from the fact that parts of Castille-La Mancha are now acting as exurbs of Madrid, but the general trend right still applies. Provinces like Albacete or Ciudad Real, completely free of any Madrid influence and closer to Andalucía, are trending right all by themselves.

This I do basically agree with - the 'dormitory town' trend has definitely helped the right, especially Vox, in Toledo and Guadalajara.

Albacete etc. are moving very slowly right in the same way as Extremadura (and, yes, this is happening in Andalucía too), but this is not the same as the way Andalucía has dropped off a cliff for the left since they lost power regionally.

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This is particularly obvious in Andalucía. As I wrote somewhere earlier in the thread, PSOE doesn't have a problem with 'demographics like those in Andalucía', it has a problem with the Andalucía Autonomous Community. It's pretty clear that a chunk of the PSOE vote here was basically built on clientelist networks which have decayed / disappeared with their loss of power in the region. Combined with a popular PP government, the local Socialist branch looks to be unsure of what to do.

Patronage networks can't explain the PSOE's long rule in Andalusia, for they did never cover a large proportion of the population (the famous and controversial PER rural subsidy only benefitted a few thousands, in case you consider it part of a patronage network). Andalusia's shift to the right is probably explained by a combination of demographic changes and fatigue after decades of PSOE governments. The PSOE's eñectoral machine came into decline as the corruption scandals eroded regional governments over the last two decades. This process of erosion has been gradual and I remember perfectly some people saying there were signs of decline after the 2008 general elections (compensated by ^PSOE's landslides in Catalonia and the Basque Country). Many Andalusians voted for the PSOE because they saw it as a "natural party of government", but it's clear that after the change of regional government they turned to the PP.Anyway, leaving aside other factors like the crisis in the relationship with Catalonia, I think demography plays a key role here: prevalence of tourism and greenhouse agriculture in coastal areas vs decline of traditional agriculture inland.

Corruption scandals eroded heavily the PP regional government in the Valencian Community, favoring a politicall change that lasted 8 years. However, other scandals in Madrid, Castilla-León and Murcia didn't have the same consequence

Well, obviously - I never claimed that patronage networks explained the PSOE’s long rule in Andalucía. I am specifically talking about the decay of networks since they lost power in the region. There is obviously gradual demographic change (and / or changes in patterns of support in different demographics), but my comment was specifically in relation to the fact that the PSOE (and wider left) vote has dropped off a cliff since 2018 - which isn’t the case in Extremadura, Castilla-La-Mancha, Murcia, etc.