Why has Spain and Portugal not seen the right wing shift unlike other European nations?

[thebeloitmoderate]

Besides the older generations of both countries still remembering their dictatorships.
 
As seen in the recent Spanish election, although Sanchez's party underperformed, VOX did so bad, and for Portugal's case Costa's party won every Subdivision in 2022

[Wiswylfen]

Besides the older generations of both countries still remembering their dictatorships.
 
As seen in the recent Spanish election, although Sanchez's party underperformed, VOX did so bad, and for Portugal's case Costa's party won every Subdivision in 2022

...

[Battista Minola 1616]

Have you looked at recent Portuguese polls?

[Cassius]

They have. I still remember reading articles from a few years ago pondering the reasons for Spain’s apparent immunity to the right-wing populist ‘virus’, only for Vox to emerge from basically nowhere and win first 11% and then 15% of the vote in the repeat elections of 2019, dragging the PP to the right as a result. Spain arguably has had much more of a right-wing shift than many of the countries typically cited as having undergone one recently (Sweden and Finland to name a couple of commonly mentioned candidates).

Meanwhile, you’re right that Costa’s government was very popular until recently in Portugal, but as mentioned above, the bottom has now fallen out and one of the principal beneficiaries has been Chega, another right-wing populist party (you could also add that all of the right-wing parties actually made gains in the 2022 general election).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The habit of insisting that a particular pan-continental trend exists by taking recent opinion polls (but ignoring the last election result) here and combining it with the last election result (but ignoring recent opinion polls) there is tedious, annoying and dishonest.

[CumbrianLefty]

And some of these right wing governmental shifts (eg in Sweden and Finland) happened after pretty modest changes at electoral level.

[Red Velvet]

Hmm they have though. Both Vox and Chega poll between the 10% - 20% margin.

Unless you’re comparing it to Western European counterparts of Germany, France and Italy, where the far-right seems more in the front but it’s not by that much - exception being Italy but then you would need to question why the far-right is particularly strong in Italy instead of the opposite.

In Germany, AfD only recently reached a record 22% on the polls and it’s under a context where the government is very unpopular and Germany being the biggest economic loser with Ukraine War, suffering the most consequences of an economic reshape they stimulate.

In France, Marine Le Pen got 21% in 2017 1st round and 23% in 2022 1st round, so the far-right there usually reaches the same peaks that Germany reaches currently

I guess there’s an argument for the far-right being somewhat weaker in Portugal as they only now are reaching stuff like 13% but I think it was more about them being mostly satisfied with their government while also not really being affected by Muslim immigration - which is something that energizes the European far-right the hardest. I think Chega’s peak in current situation is around 15% but I doubt they grow much there. Only in a scenario of economic crisis where after a backlash against establishment leaders, the far-right takes over Europe as a whole and Portugal is last one to fall. Largest group of immigrants are Brazilians who are better well-integrated into society than Islamic immigrants, which means there’s also a limit to how wide the far-right xenophobic message is embraced.

But in Spain, Vox has reached 15% in 2019. I think in a scenario of crisis - like the one Germany is going through, they could get over 20% as well but luckily Spain seems to be on an exceptional good economic moment in comparison with the rest of Europe that is negatively affected by Ukraine war. So what you saw was the reduction of the far-right vote in favor of a more center-right vote. Vox fell to 12% and depends on PP for being in power.

Which opens a whole discussion about the “center-right” being somewhat less moderate in Iberian Peninsula than in places like Germany, where conservative Angela Merkel welcomes the social-democrats in a coalition to govern. That is something that can also limit the gains of far-right leaders as well.

I don’t think there is that big of a difference though when it’s around only a 10% difference in how these parties poll.

[Mike88]

In the 2022 election, despite the PS majority, there was a shift to the right with rightwing parties gathering 43% of the votes, a 8% increase from 2019. CHEGA surged to 7% and the Liberals to 5%, while the PSD also grew a bit but nothing worthy of notice. The other main result of that election was the almost wipeout of the leftwing parties, BE and PCP, which concentrated their votes in the PS and gave the Socialists enough votes to reach a majority in critical districts. The fear of instability, just after a pandemic, 2nd elections and the uncertainty regarding the place of the far right in a future government, made several voters to vote for stability at any cost.

As of now, with Costa's growing unpopularity, the right wing parties are holding on to a majority in polling, although polls should be taken with a grain of salt as several, and unexpected, factors could change everything, regardless when the next election is held. What makes the right wing surge in Portugal is not immigration or culture wars, it's more corruption and the view that the country is "falling apart" economically.

Spain, has big differences compared with Portugal. On paper it may be similar, but in reality no. Spain has territorial issues, Portugal does not; Spain has a big debate regarding culture wars and minority rights, Portugal does not; The far-right in Spain is different than in Portugal, as Vox and CHEGA may be "similar" but are completely different parties as Vox is a party with a structure and several leaders, while CHEGA is just a "personality cult" with nothing more other than that. Also, Sanchéz is much more ideological than Costa, which drives more polarization.