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

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

In what universe would Catalonian nationalists be rewarded for sabotaging a government that, by all accounts, receives broad support from Catalonians of all backgrounds, as evidenced by the massive surge in the support of PSOE and Sumar in rural Catalonia? What is the chain of events where this would work out for them?

Ultimately, Catalonian nationalists do not need to care about whether their voters back them in federal elections. The present arrangement isn't optimal for them but they have power and autonomy in a devolved government, which their voters are tacitly supporting by voting for PSOE and Sumar. On the other hand, we have also seen that these people are deranged and dangerous who are capable of acting irrationally, so who knows, but I sense that various posts here copium - the right failed disastrously tonight.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

In what universe would Catalonian nationalists be rewarded for sabotaging a government that, by all accounts, receives broad support from Catalonians of all backgrounds, as evidenced by the massive surge in the support of PSOE and Sumar in rural Catalonia? What is the chain of events where this would work out for them?

I mean, the Catalan voters of the separatist parties want independence, it is quite obvious that they punished them with abstention for supporting the central government and not getting a referendum.

BigSerg is weirdly right here : the whole implosion of the Catalan government and seperatist party system is because the civil society orgs (Omnium, ANC, CDR) that have grown massively vs the actual parties are now trying to apply serious pressure on the parties for "selling out" to Sanchez and the whole fiasco of the procès in general. This is not a negligible factor in whether Junts and ERC back a new Sanchez government rather than doing a double or nothing "referendum or bust" negotiation strategy, at least for a sustained period of time, enough to calm the base of the nationalist support.

I haven't discounted the fact that Catalonian parties and activists, being deranged and dangerous psychos, could make a grave mistake imperiling an arrangement that has worked surprisingly well for them. I am making an argument that it should be abundantly clear to them that the typical Catalonian-speaking person approves of Pedro Sanchez, abhors the Spanish right and cares about preserving Catalonian autonomy as it exists under the current system. We don't need to debate this: that is the obvious message as sent by Catalonian voters tonight.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

In what universe would Catalonian nationalists be rewarded for sabotaging a government that, by all accounts, receives broad support from Catalonians of all backgrounds, as evidenced by the massive surge in the support of PSOE and Sumar in rural Catalonia? What is the chain of events where this would work out for them?

I mean, the Catalan voters of the separatist parties want independence, it is quite obvious that they punished them with abstention for supporting the central government and not getting a referendum.

BigSerg is weirdly right here : the whole implosion of the Catalan government and seperatist party system is because the civil society orgs (Omnium, ANC, CDR) that have grown massively vs the actual parties are now trying to apply serious pressure on the parties for "selling out" to Sanchez and the whole fiasco of the procès in general. This is not a negligible factor in whether Junts and ERC back a new Sanchez government rather than doing a double or nothing "referendum or bust" negotiation strategy, at least for a sustained period of time, enough to calm the base of the nationalist support.

I haven't discounted the fact that Catalonian parties and activists, being deranged and dangerous psychos, could make a grave mistake imperiling an arrangement that has worked surprisingly well for them. I am making an argument that it should be abundantly clear to them that the typical Catalonian-speaking person approves of Pedro Sanchez, abhors the Spanish right and cares about preserving Catalonian autonomy as it exists under the current system. We don't need to debate this: that is the obvious message as sent by Catalonian voters tonight.

That is false and delirious. The only reason why the Psoe won in Catalonia is precisely because there was a huge abstention of more than ten points, that abstention did a lot of damage to the separatists.

I have spent over a decade of my life following and studying election results in Spain. Anyone who is actually interested in Spanish psephology can see that the massive shifts in support in rural Catalonia cannot be explained by a rise in abstention.

As an example, here are results from some town in Catalonia (Avinyo):
Junts - 27% (no change)
PSOE - 26% (+19%)
ERC - 21% (-14%)
Sumar - 7% (+2%)
CUP - 5% (-10%)


Virtually no one backed non-nationalist parties last time -  these parties combined for far less than 20% of the vote. Now, summing over Sumar and PSOE alone gets you to 33%. No, this cannot be explained by abstention, it's obvious.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

In what universe would Catalonian nationalists be rewarded for sabotaging a government that, by all accounts, receives broad support from Catalonians of all backgrounds, as evidenced by the massive surge in the support of PSOE and Sumar in rural Catalonia? What is the chain of events where this would work out for them?

I mean, the Catalan voters of the separatist parties want independence, it is quite obvious that they punished them with abstention for supporting the central government and not getting a referendum.

BigSerg is weirdly right here : the whole implosion of the Catalan government and seperatist party system is because the civil society orgs (Omnium, ANC, CDR) that have grown massively vs the actual parties are now trying to apply serious pressure on the parties for "selling out" to Sanchez and the whole fiasco of the procès in general. This is not a negligible factor in whether Junts and ERC back a new Sanchez government rather than doing a double or nothing "referendum or bust" negotiation strategy, at least for a sustained period of time, enough to calm the base of the nationalist support.

I haven't discounted the fact that Catalonian parties and activists, being deranged and dangerous psychos, could make a grave mistake imperiling an arrangement that has worked surprisingly well for them. I am making an argument that it should be abundantly clear to them that the typical Catalonian-speaking person approves of Pedro Sanchez, abhors the Spanish right and cares about preserving Catalonian autonomy as it exists under the current system. We don't need to debate this: that is the obvious message as sent by Catalonian voters tonight.

I know you love effortless superiority and refuse to debate us plebs who are not in your good books but here goes :  no it isn't because there are many factors as to why the PSC did well and the popularity of Sanchez is not necessarily one of them (the hatred of the Right might be yes, but then that was present the past few elections as well). For example, a huge chunk of refusenik seperatists who would vote for Rufian solely because for years he acted like a troll in the parliament then suddenly became a Sanchez-stan are probably disaffected. THe whole seperatist bloc in Catalonia is going through an acute crisis, the government only hasn't called new elections because they know this type of result could occur, but you simply do not know if the extra PSC seats is a ringing endorsement of Pedro Sanchez. Catalonia has its own political culture and that is a factor as much as what goes on in Moncloa.

The message sent by Catalan voters is that they have lost trust in the separatist parties.

Will this trust be regained by Catalonian parties sabotaging a government that is preferred to the Spanish right (maybe we can debate the popularity of Sanchez but not the preference for him over Feijoo)? Maybe if you endorse magical thinking. Catalonian nationalists are magical thinkers, in love with delusions and danger, so I don't discount the possibility they do something stupid. But I don't think it would work out for them...

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The separatists go from 42.6% to 27.2% of the votes and lose 9 seats.

ERC: 13.2% and -6
Junts X Cat: 11.2% and -1
CUP: 2.8% -2

Part of the ERC vote was for the Psoe, but most of the debâcle was due to the abstention of 11 points. I insist, maybe ERC wants to commit suicide by supporting Sanchez again but Junts, I don't think so. Either a referendum or new elections

Now that we have the most detailed election results possible, we know that abstentions played only a limited role in the beating experienced by Catalonian nationalists. There was a large increase in abstentions throughout Catalonia, including in neighborhoods where nationalist parties receive nil support. It's true that the abstention rate increased to a great extent in nationalist strongholds but it was still substantial in Baix Llobregat and Barcelona. There's no reason to believe that it was only nationalists staying home in these areas because in apartment complexes where maybe 10% support nationalist parties, the same rise in abstention occurred.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

The Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, is tackling Yolanda Diaz hard :

https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20230724/9130580/belarra-culpa-diaz-perdida-votos-renuncia-feminismo-e-invisibilizar.html

I was also perplexed as to why Sumar were so happy with losing seats, but in a context where the "left of PSOE" parties were on a road to a cliff and being wiped out fully, it is understandable. Still, I find Diaz's campaigning a bit too much like the "Everything is Awesome" Lego Movie song. Hugs and smiles won't solve crippled political systems.

Here's why Sumar failed to improve upon Podemos performance: they didn't emphasize gender neutral pronouns enough and they didn't emphasize their association with political figures who are despised by 80% of Spaniards enough.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I think you can say that the PSOE's support of a special and generous unemployment insurance system for agricultural workers, who were very concentrated in Andalusia, was a key part of its command of the region's voters. Of course, over time, the importance of this system waned but retirees who once worked in the sector could be counted to vote PSOE based on the large amount of transfers steered towards them in adulthood (and that likely made them wealthier than they otherwise would have been). Today, the share of people in Andalusia who benefitted from this is falling off of a cliff.

A quick summary of the system: agricultural work is quite seasonal and thus agricultural workers tend to experience many more spells of unemployment than other workers. Employment relationships tend to be short, numbered in weeks rather than years. My understanding is that the UI rules for ag. workers in Spain are extremely generous and allow someone to receive UI benefits after performing very little work and for long durations. I think this is obviously problematic and may go a long way towards explaining why Spain had a severe structural unemployment problem in, say, the 1980s.