Spanish elections and politics

[Former President tack50]

What was the changes in healthcare system which PP government implemented in 2012. As I can see PSOE now is claiming that they succeeded in reverting them and I wonder what was that about.

From what I can tell it was basically cuts. There was a 10 000 million € cut early in Rajoy's tenure and healthcare investments are still lower than in 2009, both as a % of GDP and in total. There have also been increases in waiting lists for treatments.

The only "change" Rajoy brought was that illegal inmigrants wouldn't be allowed to use healthcare other than for emergency purposes. However reverting that was one of the earliest measures taken by the Sánchez government so maybe other than fully implementing it I don't know what they can do.

[Former President tack50]

Interesting, so a leftwing coalition or minority government seems possible.

Well, PSOE-UP-PNV only add up to 173 in their highest estimation. So it's within the margin of error but it's also an upset.

Of course PSOE-UP-ERC(-PNV) would indeed get a majority but I don't know if ERC would be willing to support that. Then again in Catalonia it seems that ERC is slowly becoming the "moderate" party and PDECat the radical one.

[Former President tack50]

In case PSOE and UP win more seats than PP and Cs, Pedro Sanchez could be elected without a majority in a second vote providing that Catalan and Basque nationalists abstain. Remember that Rajoy won the investiture in 2016 with only 170 votes of 350, thanks to the abstention of a majority of PSOE MPs. First investiture vote requires absolute majority (176 seats); second investiture vote requires simple majority (more affirmative than negative votes).

Sure, but remember that back in 2015 PSOE+Pod+IU had 161 seats while PP+Cs had 163.

If what you say were true, in theory Sánchez should have become PM back in 2015; I don't think a "yes" vote from PNV would have been that hard to get.

If PSOE and UP win more seats than PP+Cs (or even slightly less, but with PNV support) it's all up to the Catalan nationalists again.

[Former President tack50]

It's been a while since we last got a poll (summer and all) but here's a new one:

Sociométrica / El Español

PSOE: 25.8% (103)
Cs: 23.1% (81)
PP: 22.6% (90)
UP: 16.5% (48)
Vox: 1.8% (1)
PACMA: 1.5% (0)

ERC: 3.0% (12)
PDECat: 1.5% (6)
PNV: 1.3% (6)
Bildu: 0.7% (2)
CC: 0.5% (1)
 
http://electomania.es/20180902sociometrica-2/

Possible majorities with this result:

PSOE+Cs
PSOE+UP+ERC+PDECat+PNV
PP+Cs+PNV

[Former President tack50]

Another poll today, this time from NC Report



This one shows essencially a tied election between PP and PSOE with Cs in third and UP in 4th.


Also, today PM Sánchez announced a very interesting (albeit extremely vague) idea: A referendum in Catalonia for more autonomy, but ruling out the possibility of independence. No idea how that would work but it's an interesting proposal even though I think that it would be rejected by both secessionists and hard unionists. I guess it would be another estatut reform like in 2006. On paper PSC+Podemos+ERC+JxCat would have a majority to reform the Estatut.

https://www.politico.eu/article/spanish-pm-pedro-sanchez-proposes-referendum-on-greater-autonomy-for-catalonia/

And related to Catalonia, the "Comitees for the Defense of the Republic" have announced that they will try to paralyze Barcelona by camping in a public square and protesting from the 11th of September (Catalonia's regional holiday) to the 3rd of October. No idea how that will work but there will certainly be a hot autumn like they are saying. I guess it will resemble the 15M protests from back in 2011.

[Former President tack50]

The leader of Podemos in Catalonia and of the CatComú coalition, Xavier Domenech has announced that he is leaving his seat in the Catalan parliament and leaving politics altogether. Among the reasons, apparently he is leaving because of the bad result in the 2017 election (not that it made García Albiol in PP resign with a much worse result). He also claims to be tired.

He will go back to his old job as a university professor.

I think he will be missed. I didn't particularly like him nor hate him though any replacement for him will certainly be a lot weaker (except for possibly Colau)



In other notes, this 31st of August was the day that more jobs were destroyed in Spain ever, with more than 300 000 jobs lost. August is always a bad month and Fridays are always a bad day for jobs in Spain (tourism and all) but this seems to be bad news nontheless. The economy is certainly weaker than a year ago.

I could certainly see PSOE having come into power at just the wrong moment economically speaking.



Also, the Sánchez budget will have to wait. The Senate, with a PP majority, blocked the debt ceiling a while ago. Sánchez tried to pass a law through the emergency procedure in a single reading to remove this power from the otherwise useless Senate (power that was given to the Senate in 2012 by PP). However procedural stuff in Congress has rejected this so it will have to pass as an ordinary law and with the possibility of ammendments. So we won't have a budget until at least 6 months from now at the very least.

At this point I'm wondering if we'll ever see a budget being passed on time again.

[Former President tack50]

Today the Sánchez government has officially passed the 100 day mark. Nothing interesting related to that but  I guess we can now see the difference with the Rajoy government.

Apparently mayor of Madrid Manuela Carmena has announced that she is running for reelection. While this would generally be good news for the left (I personally think Madrid is lost if Carmena had retired), it's caused a bit of trouble inside Podemos and IU since she has announced that she will run not as a party (whether officially "Unidos Podemos" or an instrumental party like Ahora Madrid in 2015) but instead as an "electors list"; basically running as an independent without any links to political parties. PSOE has said that they won't take part on the Carmena electors list.

In fact she has said that she will run for mayor even if she doesn't have the support of Podemos and IU and doesn't want to go through a primaries process. In any case I don't think Podemos/IU will try and run against Carmena.

Finally, we have a new poll. And for the first time, a pollster other than El Español shows Vox getting a seat!

GAD3 for ABC

PSOE 27% (106)
PP 25,9% (106)
Cs 20,6% (68)
UP 15,9% (43)
Vox 1,5% (1)

ERC 2,8% (11)
PDeCat 1,9% (7)
PNV 1,1% (6)
Bildu 0,7% (2)

CC isn't shown, so I'm going to assume they get around 0.2% of the vote and no seats.

[Former President tack50]

For a government with only 101 days in office, there sure have been a lot of ministers with scandals. First the Máxim Huerta thing and now this.

Apparently the minister of healthcare, Carmen Montón, also has an irregular masters degree at the same university as the PP politicians (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos). In this case she apparently got the masters degree even though half of the subjects were already over when she entered the course.

Honestly, I feel she should resign, not (just) for getting a masters degree fraudulently, but for doing a masters degree in gender studies. That alone shows she doesn't have good judgement xD

https://www.eldiario.es/politica/DIRECTO-master-Monton-claves-reacciones_13_813098683.html

[Former President tack50]

Carmen Montón should resign immediately, since she has failed this morning in providing explanations for the many irregularities reported by journalists from eldiario.es (the same who unveiled the master irregularities of PP politicians). Pablo Casado should have never run for the PP leadership, because he got his master degree without studying.

I'm highly dissapointed at Carmen Montón, who held the Healthcare portfolio on the Valencian regional government and made a good job. She must leave. Said this, WTF with gender studies? Are you a male chauvinist or what?

It's a joke based on that the "gender studes" degree is often considered worthless. Not on gender studies or feminism themselves.

I do agree she has to leave for basically the same reasons, not that (which was a joke).

Also, former deputy PM Soraya Saénz de Santamaría is leaving politics altogether after her defeat in the PP primary.

http://www.elmundo.es/espana/2018/09/10/5b9662e9ca474183788b4623.html

[Former President tack50]

That may be stupid question to ask, especially taking into consideration that Spanish politics recently become stupidly dynamic and interesting: how is PACMA doing these days? And VOX?

Who knows? From what I can tell Vox is probably around the 1.x% mark and on the edge of getting a seat. PACMA is around the same in the popular vote but with a much lower chance of getting a seat since it's more spread out.

In any case the snap Andalusian elections and especially the 2019 European elections will determine whether they get a chance at a seat or not.

[Former President tack50]

Well, minister Carmen Montón has finally resigned, one day after the accusations surfaced. today more accusations against her happened, this time of plagiarism. Her resignation is a bit weird since up until this evening PM Sánchez was still supporting her.

In any case, I guess the fact that there were even more accusations, plus internal pressure inside PSOE (even if Sánchez himself wasn't in favour of her resigning, many in the party did) forced her.

Good riddance IMO. This government certainly feels cleaner just because of how these scandals have been handled.

[Former President tack50]

Yup. Today Rivera accused PM Pedro Sánchez of cheating in his doctorate thesis.

Sánchez's doctorate thesis is quite controversial, since it's technically public, but access to it is extremely restricted, you have to go to the university in person to see it, you are only given a limited amount of time and you can't take any photocopies or pictures.

So according to some rumours Sánchez's thesis is plagiarized, and even just the fact that access to it is very limited (when Sánchez himself could simply make it public) makes a lot of people believe something is off.

Also according to specialists, Sánchez's thesis seems very basic, which at the very least wouldn't justify the grade he got (cum laude)

Though apparently the university has done a first check to see if it was plagarized and the result was that it wasn't.

If anyone cares, it's officially registered in the respective department of the ministry of education, but the thesis itself is not there, just a 1 paragraph summary.

https://www.educacion.gob.es/teseo/mostrarRef.do?ref=1091215

[Former President tack50]

Also today in Congress the reform of the Canary Islands statute of autonomy was passed. I looked it up and it's the first passed statute reform for any autonomous community since 2011. Technically it still has to go through the Senate, but it should pass easily unless Sánchez calls a snap election for some reason.

https://www.canarias7.es/politica/el-congreso-aprueba-la-propuesta-de-reforma-del-estatuto-de-canarias-DG5484498

Among the key features, the islands will get more self government, the special taxation regime (REF) will be more protected and the islands will get a new electoral system. Other minor but important features are that the premier of the islands gets the ability to call snap elections independently of all other regions (Valencia already has this iirc) and also gets the abilty to rule by decree, like the Prime Minister (not sure if any other place has this).

The new electoral system, while still bad, is a slight improvement over the old one. The Canary Islands parliament will go up to 70 seats, from the current 60. Of these 10 new seats, 1 will be assigned to the island of Fuerteventura (which before had 7 seats compared to La Palma's 8, even though it had a higher population). The other 9 will be assigned in a regional constituency.

The electoral barriers have also been lowered to 15% on a single island or 4% in the entire archipielago (down from 30% and 6% previously). Had this system been used for the 2015 regional elections, the new result would have been:

CC: 20 (+2)
PSOE: 17 (+2)
PP: 14 (+2)
Podemos: 9 (+2)
NCa: 5 (-)
ASG: 3 (-)
Cs: 2 (+2)

Viable coalitions: CC+PSOE; CC+PP+Cs; CC+PP+ASG

So yeah, CC still wins while coming 3rd in the popular vote. And the new system still has the smaller islands overrepresented. So while an improvement (particularly lowering the electoral barriers), it's far from great.

The vote in Congress was:

Yes: PP, PSOE, CC, NCa, PDECat, PNV
No: Podemos
Abstaining: Cs, ERC

[Former President tack50]

Had this system been used for the 2015 regional elections, the new result would have been:

CC: 20 (+2)
PSOE: 17 (+2)
PP: 14 (+2)
Podemos: 9 (+2)
NCa: 5 (-)
ASG: 3 (-)
Cs: 2 (+2)

How did you calculate this allocation of seats? As far as I know the draft does not detail the system of allocation of the regional list seats. Maybe it's better than nothing, but this reform s botched.

[/quote]

From what I can tell the regional list seats are just treated like any other constituency, so I just asigned the 9 seats proportionally to the regional results (iirc it ended up something like PSOE 2, PP 2, CC 2, Podemos 2, NC 1).

Other than that I just recalculated the results in each island taking into account what Cs got (since they would now be above the threshold), and the extra seat in Fuerteventura.

Of course if the extra regional seats are meant as leveling seats (as opposed to just an extra constituency) that would be harder to calculate, but it would also be better.

As for the Franco stuff, I don't think it will cost many votes to PP/Cs (if at all), but it might make it harder for them to take centrist voters and distances them from literally every other party in Congress.

[Former President tack50]

Yes, it's not about votes but still. Remember that PP didn't formally condemn Francoism in Congress until 2002. It might make them look bad but their base doesn't care.

As for the reform, as a sidenote, if the regional constituency is elected separately it will be the first time that a paralel voting system will be used in Spain. I don't think it will happen but it would be interesting to see the diferences between the island and regional vote (particularly in La Gomera). It will also make counting slower.

Also, the Vox rise is real. 3 of the last 5 polls have included them.

IMOP/El Confidencial

PSOE: 26.5%
Cs: 23.9%
PP: 20.3%
UP: 15.4%
Vox: 3.0%
PACMA: 2.1%

ERC: 2.8%
PDECat: 1.5%
PNV: 1.2%
Bildu: 0.7%

Finally, in Sánchez's thesis scandal, he has released it and the like, and now he is threatening to bring charges against the newspapers that accused him of plagiarism. The 3 newspapers that did (ABC, El Mundo and OKDiario) aren't going to retract themselves so I guess it will end up in court.

[Former President tack50]

Yup, I'd say Sánchez's doctorate is clean. Or at the absolute worst, the accusations against him, even if they were true, can't really be proven easily. For example, the accusation that it was a shadow writer (Carlos Ocaña) who really did the thesis, has been rejected both by Sánchez and by Ocaña himself, so unless they have proof that they are lying there's nothing there.

And of course Casado is not the right person to accuse Sánchez of that. I wonder what will happen if the Supreme Court ends up indicting Casado under charges of bribery and prevarication.

As for Cs and Franco, they are clearly trying to get votes from PP, they seem to have abandoned any pretense of being centre-left or even centrist; and are clearly right of center by now.

[Former President tack50]

Yay, unpopular foreign Prime Ministers for mayor! Though to be fair, if Valls somehow became mayor it would be quite a significant event in the EU, the first time a foreigner becomes mayor of an important town in another country.

In any case though, Valls seems to me like a significant underdog. Colau is favoured since she can get the support of both unionist parties (PSC) and secessionist parties (ERC, CUP); plus the fact that the right has only won the elections in Barcelona exactly once (in the 2011 right wing landslide)

The secessionists (particularly ERC or if they make a joint list) do have a chance of unseating Valls, but Cs doesn't.

[Former President tack50]

Well, what used to be the bestt pollster, the public CIS, is now going to do monthly polls, instead of 1 poll every 3 months. The change is good, and their first monthly poll is this one

CIS



Honeestly, this poll is terrible garbage. We should rename CIS to "Centre of Socialist Investigations" by now lol.

The reason why it's thrash is basically that PSOE is way up and PP way down. Especially compared with the "direct vote intention" (before adjustments are made), where PSOE is actually way down from the last poll and PP quite up.

I still believe PSOE should be ahead, but by 1-2 points, not by 10 like the poll shows. In fact, a direct extapolation would show PSOE winnning in literally all provinces except the 4 catalan ones, 2/3 Basque provinces and Ávila.

Other weird stuff is ERC being way up (4% is a lot), Bildu out of nowhere overtaking PNV when literally no other poll predicts that

Also, the funniest crosstab of all time, apparently 16% of CC voters will now vote for Bildu. Yes n=1 but still considering that Bildu and CC don't run in the same provinces I'm having a hard time thinking about such a voter.

Only good thing is that it does show Vox and PACMA (for the first time I think, at least for Vox). With 1.4% and 1.6% respectively, they are both at the edge of getting 1 seat, with Vox being slightly closer because of  their vote distribution (PACMA is more spread out)

We also have 2 more (and better IMO) polls:

DYM for El Independiente and Prensa Ibérica



Metroscopia



Finally, we also have some regional polls. I'm not going to post them all but if anyone cares here they are

https://www.electograph.com/search/label/Auton%C3%B3micas

In terms of my "ratings", I'm now less confident about PP winning again in Melilla (though they should still be favoured) and think that GBai is ahead in Navarra (instead of being a tossup)



Finally, in non polling related news, Manuel Valls is officially in as Cs' candidate for Barcelona mayor

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/former-french-pm-seeks-political-redemption-in-barcelona-1.3640045

[Former President tack50]

Also, there's a scandal in the Sánchez cabinet (again). This time involving a leaked private conversation from minister of Justice Dolores Delgado calling minister of the interior Fernando Grande-Marlaska a fa*** (maricón) all the way back in 2009. Grande-Marlaska is openly homesexual.

The conversation was recorded by the controversial Jose Jimenez Villarejo. Not only that but apparently she initially denied having been with him, then apparently she had to admit she had been with him.

In any case, not sure if she will end up resigning but if she does it will be the 3rd resignation in slightly less than 4 months lol.

This government is having a ton of scandals for some reason. They are handled better and are less serious than the PP scandals IMO but still there are a ton. Then again that might be my political leanings.

[Former President tack50]

And yet another scandal in the Sánchez government. This time involving Science and Universities minister Pedro Duque (the famous "astronaut minister")

In this case Duque is being accused of buying his house through a "business without activity" in order to pay less in taxes. Meanwhile Duque claims that he didn't do anything illegal and that he ended up paying the same amount in taxes that he would have paid otherwise, and that his actual salary was also paid directly to him and not through that business.

And of course earlier declarations of Sánchez on the issue have come to bite him back. This time he apparently claimed in 2015 that "If someone in the executive of my party had created a society to pay less in taxes, that person would be out of the executive next morning".

Not sure if Duque should resign or not honestly.

But yet another scandal makes me worried about the Sánchez government.

[Former President tack50]

And speaking of Catalonia, Catalan premier Quim Torra has sent an ultimatum to the Spanish government: either Sánchez starts negotiating a real and internationally recognized referendum before November, or they'll drop support of the Sánchez government in Congress (almost certainly meaning a snap general election).

As expected, the Spanish government has already rejected that, claiming they are in support of (more) self-government, but not of self-determination. They also reject reactivating article 155 as some in Cs and PP are asking though.

https://elpais.com/politica/2018/10/02/actualidad/1538498312_253041.html
https://elpais.com/ccaa/2018/10/02/catalunya/1538491575_334391.html?rel=str_articulo#1538505650468

[Former President tack50]

Yeah, me too. I expected that either Sánchez would expire his term, call a snap election well after the EU elections (say, autumn 2019) or the budget fails and Sánchez calls the election in February/March at the earliest.

Though I guess the last scenario can still happen, PDECat might not support Sánchez but they sure aren't going to support Casado/Rivera either. Though maybe Rivera should get in touch with them and call a no confidence vote which clearly is intended just to call an election with an independent caretaker government?

[Former President tack50]

El Confidencial did an interesting report analyzing the voters of the 2 latest "emerging parties": PACMA and Vox

https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2018-10-06/vox-pacma-encuestas-elecciones-cis-escano_1626357/



Basically:

Vox has an average age of 55. So quite the old party, probably shared with PP.
PACMA has a very young base, with the average age being 33!.

Vox (much like similar parties in Europe) has a very masculine base of 63% men, while PACMA has a very feminine base of 70% women. In both cases it's a lot more skewed than the main 4 parties (which never go beyond something like 57-43 either way)

PACMA is voted mostly by leftists, with 47% being on the left (0-4) and another 25% on the centre (5). Interestingly there are 6.3% of right wing PACMA voters.

On the other hand Vox is quite on the right, with almost no voters on the left, 16% on the centre and 21% on the centre-right (6). More than 60% of Vox voters place themselves clearly right of center (7-10)

[Former President tack50]

It's finally official now, Susana Diaz will call a snap Andalusian election for the 2nd of December, in order to avoid having it the same day as a hypothetical snap election.

https://www.elperiodico.com/es/politica/20181008/susana-diaz-convoca-elecciones-anticipadas-andalucia-7077227

Though honestly she should have called it much sooner (ideally for late October), particularly when the ERE corruption judgement is around the corner. I wonder when will be the exact date, but the court ruling will certainly come during the campaign or just before it.

In any case, Andalucia is Safe PSOE, the only question is whether she will do a deal with Cs again or maybe with Podemos (even though the Andalusian Podemos branch hates her and she hates Podemos as well)

[Former President tack50]

A couple of new regional polls (we will start getting more and more of these as we get closer to May 2019). We also get one of the few polls that show Vox with chances at a seat in a regional election (which surprised me honestly)

El Heraldo de Aragón for Aragon regional elections

PSOE: 23.6% (17-19)
PP: 22.3% (16-19)
Cs: 21.4% (15-17)
UP: 17.3% (11-12)
PAR: 5.7% (3)
ChA: 3.2% (1)
Vox: 2.7% (0-1)

https://www.electograph.com/2018/10/aragon-amasm-181014.html

My rating: Lean PP (flip)

Even in the best case scenario for the left, they still lose their majority. IMO Lambán is toast, only way he manages to hold on is with a PSOE-Cs coalition (with or without PAR). But the left will certainly lose their majority here

They also did polls for the mayors of the 3 provincial capitals (Zaragoza, Huesca, Teruel). The general summary seems to be:

https://www.electograph.com/2018/10/aragon-capitales-amasm-181014.html

Huesca: Tossup. The left will probably win in terms of votes, but because of Aragón Sí Puede (which may be Podemos, IU or neither!) and ChA falling shortly below the 5% threshold (both around 4%), a right wing government is within the margin of error.

Zaragoza: Lean PSOE (flip). Mayor Santiesteve (Podemos) is toast. He drops from a narrow second in 2015 all the way to 4th. Zaragoza for some reason has been quite a left wing city (even holding its PSOE mayor in the 2011 wave!). However the left combined still adds up to a majority. PSOE goes up a lot, while PP stays the same and Cs rises quite a bit. ChA may or may not make the threshold. Finally Vox was polled and got around 3%, well below the threshold (but still sort of close).

Teruel: Safe PP. The right increases in a place where PP+Cs already got short of a majority by just 1 seat in 2015 (currently there's a PP+Cs+PAR coalition). The only question is how much will it increase and how close Cs will get to PP, but really Teruel is safe for PP.

CC internal only in Gran Canaria, for the Cabildo and the regional parliament

Cabildo

NC: 27.5% (9)
PSOE: 17.4% (5-6)
CC-Unidos: 14.7% (4-5)
PP: 12.5% (4)
Cs: 10.8% (3)
UP: 10.7% (3)
Others: 6.4%

My rating: Safe NC

Morales is very popular and is safe IMO. Only question is whether NC-PSOE will be enough or whether he'll also need Podemos or someone else.

Canary Islands parliament (15 Gran Canaria seats)

PSOE: 20.5% (3-4)
NC: 17.4% (3)
UP: 15.8% (2-3)
PP: 13.5% (2)
Cs: 13.3% (2)
CC-Unidos: 13.3% (2)
Others: 6.2%

Lol, all parties almost tied with each other. No rating since this is just one constituency, but in general ok news for the left (though they lose 1 seat compared to 2015) and great news for CC, which goes up in a hostile island (then again it's a CC internal so no wonder).

The poll also includes several approval ratings for various local politicians:

https://www.canarias7.es/binrepository/estimacio-n-voto-octubre-2018_4114712_20181013220146.pdf

Honestly the most surprising is that premier Fernando Clavijo is somehow above water in the most hostile island to him! (5.3/10)

Keep in mind that this isn't just an internal, but also an old internal, allegedly from July.