Spanish elections and politics II: Catalan elections on February 14, 2021

[Former President tack50]

Looking at polls I would actually be moving Galicia from tossup to Lean PP.

It seems to me the Vox vote will consolidate behind PP and that Feijoo is personally popular in a similar way to the Southern PSOE premiers like Guillermo Fernandez Vara (Extremadura) and Emiliano Garcia Page (Castille-La Mancha

Another interesting story in Galicia is the recent BNG surge. With a good campaign they could get a really good result, a big comeback from their miserable 2016 result

The Basque Country is still boring and a PNV lanfslide though I guess the recent landfill disaster mighg make them lose votes

[Former President tack50]

Well, it seems coronavirus is taking all the national attention recently. As of now, all schools will be closed for 14 days in the province of Vitoria (Basque Country). Madrid has also closed all schools in the region. (Madrid and Vitoria are 2 of the 3 main outbreak centers, the last one being centered around the town of Haro in La Rioja).

A Lombardy-like lockdown of Madrid, while I think is unlikely, would be absolutely massive, especially considering it is the nation's capital.

Much like stock markets around the world, the Spanish stock market is also in free fall.

Certainly not the greatest situation out there.

[Former President tack50]

So, the country seems to be having a 🔥THIS IS FINE🔥 moment regarding the Coronavirus pandemic. How are your cities? Mine is doing fine for now. There are no Coronavirus cases in my province AFAIK. Though I've seen pictures from Madrid that show empty supermarket shelves. I'd rather not go through that again, thanks.

Guess living in "la España vaciada" has some perks after all

Also situation in my town is exactly the same as Velasco's (it is literally the same town lol). Classes at university are cancelled, everyone is on high alert and what not.

For the anectotal reports on supermarkets, everything seemed normal to me. Other anecdotal stuff includes students from the "minor" islands (everything that is not Gran Canaria or Tenerife) rushing to go to their homes; much like how all the Canarian students in Madrid and what not rushed to get back to the islands.

[Former President tack50]

For the record this is only the 2nd time ever that emergency powers (states of alarm, exception and siege) are activated. Last time was in 2010 during an illegal air controllers strike so even that is very different from this

[Former President tack50]

The Basque regional elections are officially delayed. I would expect the Galician elections to be similarly delayed. No new dates have been set.

Also many politicians are having coronavirus. The latest one being the premier of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

[Former President tack50]

Certainly been a pretty big fall from grace for Juan Carlos.

Yeah, had he not been corrupt he probably goes down in history as one of the better monarchs in Spain; certainly the best since what, Alfonso XII? The short lived Amadeo I? Maybe Carlos III?

Now his legacy will be a lot more mixed. On one hand the will still be the king that turned Spain into a democracy and who voluntarily relinquished power; and who saved said democracy in a fateful night in 1981. On the other, he later became corrupt and surrounded by scandal.

[Former President tack50]

First post-corona poll. It is not from the most reliable newspaper or pollster but it is better than nothing:

https://www.esdiario.com/92368796/Sondeo-ESdiario-el-PSOE-se-hunde-por-la-tardia-reaccion-de-Sanchez-al-Covid-19.html

ESdiario / Demoscopia y Servicios

PSOE: 24,5% (101)
PP: 23,9% (103)
VOX 14,5% (52)
UP 13,4% (37)
C's 8,3% (13)
MP 1,3%

Right: 46.7% (168)
Left: 37.9% (138)

First poll to have PP in the lead (in terms of seats at least) in over a year.

Honestly I think the left vs right gap is a bit too big, both in terms of votes and in terms of seats.

[Former President tack50]

Nobody has really mentioned it, but the 2 days ago PM Sánchez requested a 15 day extension of the state of alarm in order to deal with the coronavirus (otherwise it would expire this Sunday).

Unlike the first time, any extensions to the state of alarm must be voted by the Congress of Deputies. That vote happened yesterday, with the following result:

Yes: 321 (PSOE, PP, Vox, UP, Cs, PNV, MP, CC, NCa, NA+, Compromís, PRC, Foro, TEx)
Abstain: 28 (ERC, JxCat, Bildu, CUP)
No: 0

While the vote was unanimous, the debate wasn't, with the secessionist parties (JxCat, ERC, Bildu) wanting tougher measures and critizising how the government centralized the response; while the right wing parties critizise the government for acting late.

[Former President tack50]

While polling has almost completely stopped, and the few polling we have does not seem very consistent; it does seem Sánchez is not getting a "rally with the flag" effect. However a poll from Galicia today (which had to cancel its election scheduled for April) does show a "rally with the flag effect" for regional premier Alberto Núñez Feijoo:

Galician regional election poll by Infortécnica (38 seats for a majority)

PP: 39-42
PSOE: 17-20
BNG: 11-12
UP: 4-8

This changes my rating from Tossup -> Lean PP

Nobody has really mentioned it, but the 2 days ago PM Sánchez requested a 15 day extension of the state of alarm in order to deal with the coronavirus (otherwise it would expire this Sunday).

And we are most likely headed for another one.

Indeed, Sanchez is expected to pass another 15 day extension of the state of alarm. This needs to be ratified by Congress but PP has already said they are voting in favour so it does not matter.+

It does seem like the worst of the pandemic is behind us thankfully though, as the amounts of deaths and infections seem to have plateaued.

I believe the restriction on "only essencial workers are allowed to go to the street" will be lifted after the Easter holidays; though there will still be a "stay at home" order.

[Former President tack50]

Clear divide between East/West, as is the case with a lot of cities.

Is it connected with the prevailing wind direction in this instance, as is often true with the UK?

Actually the big divide in Madrid is North/South, not East/West, although as you notice a weaker East/West divide is still present.

Basically the southern neighbourhoods tend to be poorer and therefore vote for the left very hard while the northern neighbourhoods vote for the right. This even extends outside of the Madrid city limits.

Suburbs to the South of Madrid are left wing strongholds. Rivas-Vaciamadrid is relatively famous for IU controlling the mayorship there very often (I think it is the largest IU mayorship). However there are plenty of other southern left wing commuter towns/suburbs like Leganés, Getafe, Fuenlabrada or Parla.

Meanwhile, the Northern suburbs of Madrid lean towards the right (places like San Sebastián de los Reyes), though because Madrid is followed by mountains towards the north and northwest there are not that many suburbs in the north.

The most right wing suburbs are those located in the West indeed, with places like Pozuelo, Majadahonda or Las Rozas routinely giving the right 70% of the vote.

[Former President tack50]

Is there a difference in climate between the wealthier and poorer areas? On google maps the northern and western suburbs look a little more lush.

I will say, Spain seems like it's one of most difficult countries to tell the upscale/right areas from the downscale/left areas just by appearance.

Well, the wealthier suburbs should be closer to the "Central Range" mountains while the Southern suburbs are closer to Castille-La Mancha and the southern half of the "Meseta", so yeah, there is probably a difference in climate and geography.

Also on that point you might be interested on a combination of these 2 maps:

Spanish precincts by income: https://www.eldiario.es/economia/MAPA-dinero-vecinos-ingresos-calle_0_955405289.html

General election results by precinct: https://www.eldiario.es/politica/votaron-resultados-elecciones-generales-calle_0_962404599.html

So with this 2 maps combined you can probably see the strong correlation beween income and election results. And combining that with Google maps you can probably get an idea of how upscale and downscale areas look like.

Anyways, for Madrid in particular, here is how the look:

Rich/upscale areas

The neighbourhood of Salamanca in Madrid city proper (Madrid precinct 4-009; 91% right)
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4289068,-3.6824615,3a,75y,356.12h,102.83t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1srhN5eFMOMqhoV9FJldMMdw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

Most of Madrid's western suburbs* (Pozuelo de Alarcón precinct 1-019; 75% right)
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.418697,-3.8347416,3a,75y,39.54h,87.67t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sM36tnkgzMq_ZlGmWSacapg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

^{*: Note some of these are actual genuine gated communities, so Google Maps is not available. Also note you have to go to actual suburbs in these areas, as "downtown Pozuelo" is actually middle class or even leaning poor.}

Poor/Downscale areas

Several neighbourhoods in Southern Madrid, most notably Vallecas, San Cristobal de los Ángeles and Usera (Madrid precinct 17-037; 75% left)
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3442557,-3.6913254,3a,75y,226.45h,97.16t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_r4lJaOESB0OwelouSAvLw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

These should be relatively good representations of how the upscale and downscale areas in Spain look like, at least in cities.

Rich people live either in suburbs with detached housing or in the 19th century city expansions just outside the old town center.

Poor people generally live in appartment blocks built during the 50s and 60s, often with precarious building conditions and what not (though there are some poor areas in Vallecas that do look nice from the outside, but are quite poor anyways)

[Former President tack50]

Personally I am very angry at the disloyalty of the Spanish right in times of crisis. Despite some mistakes, the government is standing up to the people. PP and Vox are being miserable in their atracks, spreading fake news and creating dischord. Pablo Casado is clearly trailing the party led by Santiago Abascal, which benefits Vox at the expense of PP. The attitude of Inés Arrimadas is being more constructive, but her party is irrelevant now. Anyway I'm taking distance from constant news feed, in order to stay mentally healthy through this confinement.

Yeah I totally agree, The opposition is being a very hard opposition, and several tweets and affirmations from Vox in particular are horrible.

However just like you I am trying to avoid most news related to the virus, as I am sick (lol) and tired of them.

[Former President tack50]

Ok, so for some reason today I decided to look up the distribution of votes by age and gender, to see how they compare and what not.

I actually found an interesting report on that by El Español, so no need to actually calculate myself. And so, here it is:



This basically just confirms everything I have said up to this point but it is still a really fun watch.

So by gender, PSOE does much better among women than men, while Vox and UP do much better among men than women. Not much difference for Cs or PP.

As for age, PSOE and PP do better among old people while UP does better among young people. Weird correlations for Cs and Vox, though interestingly Vox does worst among the old.

Personally, I think we should only allow women boomers to vote and just disenfranchise everyone else

[Former President tack50]

Why does Vox do better among men, while PP and Cs have no major gender gap at all? I assume it's a side-effect of the age gap?

Maybe, though also I suppose Cs and PP are seen as "moderate" while Vox very obviously isn't. I think back before the Vox rise they both had a male electorate (though nowhere near as much as Vox)

In my view women do not just lean to the left; but rather they tend to lean towards more moderate parties, while men tend to vote more for the extremes.

[Former President tack50]

Vox does worst amongst old people - presumably because they actually remember the Franco era?

Maybe but I do not think this is the entire truth as plenty of old people would have a positive opinion of the Franco era.

I think it is just that older people have a sort of loyalty to the old 2 party machines that young people do not have. Oryxslayer is correct in this.

The gender divide being especially large amongst the youth is interesting but I think is also a phenomenon you see throughout the western  world?

Yeah the gender divide being especially large among the youth is interesting. And indeed it seems a common phenomenon throughout the western world.

However I do not think this fully applies in Spain? For this comparison in Spain, we get the following results:

Young men: 36-36 tie
Young women: 40-20 Left
Gap of 20 points

Old men: 47-39 right
Old women: 52-41 left
Gap of 19 points

So the difference does not seem all that significant to me? (it does mean that old people are basically even while young people lean to the left but that is not all that surprising tbh)

Granted the methodology is not great and I should probably be extrapolating all these values to 100% (it is kind of hard when you do not have data for secessionists and/or abstentions)

[Former President tack50]

Vox does worst amongst old people - presumably because they actually remember the Franco era?

Maybe but I do not think this is the entire truth as plenty of old people would have a positive opinion of the Franco era.

Actually, roughly what proportion of Spaniards *are* positive about Franco?

Its a sensitive topic I know, but surely some polling has been done on it down the years.

Actually we have not had a proper poll directly asking about the Franco dictatorship since 2008.

Doing a trip down memory lane, polls asking directly on Franco's "approval rating" in 2005 found that 51% of Spaniards had a negative opinion of him. And as you would expect, his approval rating was better among old people and low among the young.

https://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2005/11/19/espana/1132371627.html

The 2008 poll, with different methodology, found that a whopping 58% of Spaniards agreed with the sentence "Francoism had boths its positives and its negatives". 42% of Spaniards were against prosecuting crimes done by the dictatorship

https://www.abc.es/espana/abci-no-pregunta-sobre-franco-desde-hace-diez-anos-201808220158_noticia.html

Finally we saw a tiny bit of polling in 2018 when Franco was removed from his tomb. 57% of Spaniards were in favour and 26% against; with the partisan breakdown you would expect. More interestingly 13% of Spaniards disagreed that Franco was a dictator.

https://www.lasexta.com/noticias/nacional/barometro-lasexta-un-374-de-votantes-del-pp-y-un-585-de-los-de-vox-creen-que-franco-no-fue-un-dictador_201910245db1600c0cf2d4f059b98a13.html

In general it seems around 25% of Spaniards should have a relatively positve image of Franco, with probably a couple more that have a "neutral" opinion on him.

[Former President tack50]

We finally have a bit of polling and it seems that the government is dropping in approval, with PSOE and UP going down from 2019. PP also seems to be going up.

Here is an example, though other polls are finding similar results:

NC Report for La Razón



Right: 154 seats; 44.8%
Left: 147 seats; 39.3%

This poll, while not great news for the left also shows why it will be hard for the right to actually win. Basically, with a popular vote gap of more than 5 points (albeit probably more like 3.5 points once you account for whatever is left of Mas País) the right is still more than 20 seats away from a majority.

Under an scenario like this, Sánchez would need an explicit yes vote from ERC and Bildu, which is tough but doable I suppose. Meanwhile there would be no way for a hypothetical PM Casado; and there would still be none until he was at at the very least 172 seats or something like that.

[Former President tack50]

So not that much of a "virus rally" for the Spanish government, like the US but unlike many others.

Indeed, if anything there is a slight "reverse virus rally" where the government is losing votes. Then again I cannot think of any event in modern Spanish history that actually was followed by a "rally with the flag" effect.

The most famous example of the Madrid bombings infamously resulted in the incumbent party losing but that is also because of Aznar's massive mistake with the handling of the attacks, blaming ETA and not Al Qaeda despite the evidence to the contrary.

[Former President tack50]

So not that much of a "virus rally" for the Spanish government, like the US but unlike many others.

Indeed, if anything there is a slight "reverse virus rally" where the government is losing votes. Then again I cannot think of any event in modern Spanish history that actually was followed by a "rally with the flag" effect.

The most famous example of the Madrid bombings infamously resulted in the incumbent party losing but that is also because of Aznar's massive mistake with the handling of the attacks, blaming ETA and not Al Qaeda despite the evidence to the contrary.

Yes, you do wonder if things *might* have been different had he been honest then.

My personal theory is that polls were wrong in 2004 and not just because of the terrorist attacks. There were plenty of people angry at the Irak war, and both the 2003 local elections as well as the 2004 EU elections (only a couple months after the general elections) resulted in PSOE victories.

Now, we will obviously never know but I personally think that had the attacks not happened, probably ends up in a PP victory, but it would be a razor thin one of like 1 point (not unlike 1996); certainly losing its overall majority.

Of course this is all especulation. But "no terrorist attacks in 2004" is certainly one of the more interesting Alternate History scenarios for modern Spain, and I have had a couple conversations on it in fact.

There are certainly others I can think of (Aznar killed in 1995; González somehow winning in 1996; or for more recent ones, UP actually beating PSOE and becoming the main party of the Spanish left); but 2004 is certainly one of the more interesting elections for alternate history.

[Former President tack50]

Apparently there is a Spanish version of the Canada/Israel meme, so enjoy I suppose!



I am personally at the quad point between socialist, leftist cuñado, republican and europist

[Former President tack50]

Apparently there is a Spanish version of the Canada/Israel meme, so enjoy I suppose!

I am personally at the quad point between socialist, leftist cuñado, republican and europist

Why are the Basque Nationalists on the far right?

I have absolutely no idea tbh. I suppose that "because they care only about money" or something like that lol

Either way I did not make this.

[Former President tack50]

So about electomanía's ElectoPanel... I know it's not the best thing to have around because of the methodology (I think it's an open-access online poll), but they recently began publishing municipal-level estimates. I think it's interesting, even if you just think about the municipal numbers as just "educated guesses". Though they weren't too far off in the Nov. 2019 election.

Anyways, here's this week's poll. It shows the right with a decent lead: https://electomania.es/ep13my20

Yeah, their methodology is not the greatest but it is still fun nontheless.

Anyways looking at the municipal level estimates is very fun, especially the "flips" from their last "panel". This one in particular seems to come with 2 big cities flipping: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (my own home town) and Zaragoza

[Former President tack50]

Galician premier Alberto Núñez Feijóo has finally called the new date for the next Galician regional election, for the 12th of July.

It is extremely likely that Basque premier Íñigo Urkullu will follow suit and call the election for the same date.

Edit: Yup, Basque election confirmed for the same day

[Former President tack50]

Galician premier Alberto Núñez Feijóo has finally called the new date for the next Galician regional election, for the 12th of July.

It is extremely likely that Basque premier Íñigo Urkullu will follow suit and call the election for the same date.

Edit: Yup, Basque election confirmed for the same day

With Spain still having over 1,000 new cases a day (they did fall below that today for one day), wouldn't it be better to wait until number of new cases close to zero?  Or at least ensure they have a mail in ballot option for those who don't want to risk going out, especially elderly and immune compromised.

In theory all elections in Spain have a vote by mail option, though it is opt in and not opt out.

As for why the election is so soon, common wisdom seems to suggest that Basque premier Urkullu wants the election as soon as possible so that he can run on what a great job the PNV has done over the past years and what not; instead of having to run with a bad economy. PNV has not had the greatest of performances during the coronavirus and they were coming off a couple corruption scandals.

PNV will win no doubt about it, but I suppose that the past few scandals will mean it will just be a standard landslide and not a massive blowout

As for Galicia, Feijoo seems to want the election on the same day as the Basques so that the Basque campaign overshadows the Galician campaign. He has done a good job with the coronavirus and does not really have many scandals as of late so having an early election also helps.

[Former President tack50]

Honestly I do not like that this stacks on top of the regional aid. I am in favour of this policy but it should replace the different regional minimum income schemes.

Tbh the lack of separation between regional powers and "federal" powers is one of my biggest complaints in terms of the current administrative structure of Spain but that is not getting solved any time soon