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

[Skye]

Nothing good can come out of this.

[Skye]

But that's the point : the spanish press are turning Spain into a latin american democracy. They are constantly baying for blood and whipping up tensions, by saying that the Transition is at risk, that Bolshevism is back in Spain (that intellectually sub-par book by Frederico Jimenez Losantos is a best seller), that they're gonna run out of toilet paper and then of course playing to the diasporas of latin americans too by equating Podemos with Chavismo. But the only actors acting like Latin American populists are PP and Vox figures, sky high in the polls.

Eh, Podemos is solely to blame for their comparisons to Chavismo.

As a Venezuelan, it irks me that they are in power, of course.

That said, Spain is not Venezuela, and it doesn't look like the country is heading that direction, at least for now.


Anyways, I guess if new elections are called, Ayuso would likely win, but then what? The PP and VOX getting an absolutely majority of seats isn't a foregone conclusion.

[Skye]

But that's the point : the spanish press are turning Spain into a latin american democracy. They are constantly baying for blood and whipping up tensions, by saying that the Transition is at risk, that Bolshevism is back in Spain (that intellectually sub-par book by Frederico Jimenez Losantos is a best seller), that they're gonna run out of toilet paper and then of course playing to the diasporas of latin americans too by equating Podemos with Chavismo. But the only actors acting like Latin American populists are PP and Vox figures, sky high in the polls.

Eh, Podemos is solely to blame for their comparisons to Chavismo.

As a Venezuelan, it irks me that they are in power, of course.

There's absolutely no comparison. Nor is there between Vox and the Latin American far right, even though, clearly, Vox is far more inspired by their model than Iglesias is by Chavez's.

Iglesias's cosying up to such regimes comes from profound anti-NATO, anti-Western hegemony views, belief in the revision of a world order, and that in order to revise such a world order, your enemy's enemy is your friend. He's not fundamentally comparable to Chavez as a political phenomenon in that Chavez was the head of the armed forces who used that institutional power to set up a rentier state, whereas Iglesias is, what, a university professor who engages in testimonial politics and whose height of power will be as a minor coalition partner to PSOE.  The entire political dynamics between Podemos and the Venezuelan coup are just incomparable, yet you genuinely meet a whole bunch of right-wing Spanish people who think Podemos could actually take over with an absolute majority and turn Spain into a rentier state.

I mean, I wasn't comparing the circumstances that brought Chavismo to power. It's exactly why I pointed out that Spain isn't Venezuela and isn't heading that direction.

But like you said, Iglesias "cozying up to such regimes" is precisely what drivers the comparisons, and at least among us Venezuelans, is why we don't look at Podemos with good eyes.

[Skye]

FWIW, 3 polls have been released since Ayuso called for elections, none (I think?) of which are from respected pollsters. They're from SyM Consulting, Hamalgama for OK Diario, and electomanía.

[Skye]

Huh, so is this "break with the populares, ally with the PSOE" strategy limited to these two regions, or is Ciudadanos as a whole distancing from the right?

Their alliances are apparently not going to break anywhere else other than in Murcia and the Community of Madrid, at least for now.

The Ayuntamiento de Madrid is not going to break up, for example. Apparently, the relationship between Almeida and Villacís isn't that bad.

Here in Castile and León, the PSOE announced a motion of no confidence after the whole Murcia-Madrid fiasco happened, but Cs stated they wouldn't join so it's set to fail since the PP and Cs have an absolute majority of the seats.

[Skye]

There's a Demoscopia poll for ESdiario.

https://twitter.com/ESdiario_com/status/1370278385272811522
Worth noting that both Cs and Podemos are dangerously close to being left out of the Assembly (there's a 5% threshold) and that could change the outcome since in this poll PP+VOX still don't get an absolute majority of seats.

[Skye]

A new Madrid poll from Metroscopia. I know the other polls we've gotten since Ayuso called for elections aren't exactly quality polls, but this is still an outlier since it has Ayuso basically winning in a landslide.

https://twitter.com/Electograph/status/1370410924427853830

[Skye]

Madrid will have elections on May 4.

https://twitter.com/PoderJudicialEs/status/1371122302000242691

[Skye]

A political earthquake is happening live.

Pablo Iglesias will leave the government and will be the Podemos candidate for the presidency of the Community of Madrid:

https://twitter.com/el_pais/status/1371420505346048000

Bets? Podemos is, according to polls, on the verge of being left out of the Assembly. Now that Iglesias will be their candidate, it's very much likely that their numbers will surge. How much, it remains in question. Will Podemos overtake Más Madrid?

[Skye]

I wouldn't be so sure that UP will surge up. If I am not mistaken, Pablo Iglesias is a rather unpopular leader, even among UP supporters he has mediocre approvals.

Sure, I don't mean to argue that now that he's the candidate, he'll threaten Gabilondo's position or something. I'm referring more to the fact that Podemos is polling at just 5% ATM. Anything lower than that and Podemos will be left out of the Assembly and Iglesias can kiss his political career goodbye. Not that anything just *slightly* better than that will be a good result for him. Which is probably why he's asking for a coalition with Más Madrid:

https://twitter.com/Miquel_R/status/1371420381626634247

[Skye]

Más Madrid has rejected Pablo Iglesias's offer for a joint list between them and Podemos.

[Skye]

We've gotten 3 new polls for the Community of Madrid, this time from decent pollsters:

https://twitter.com/Electograph/status/1372070466249166853
https://twitter.com/Electograph/status/1372088452561403905
https://twitter.com/Electograph/status/1372122248690204673
All three have Ayuso winning easily, but whether she'll get a majority with VOX's seats isn't set in stone. GAD3's poll is exceptionally bad for Cs.

So Podemos did get a bump after Iglesias's announcement, and could overtake Más Madrid

[Skye]

So I averaged the polls that came out after Iglesias's announcement (comparison vs polls previous to that taken this year):

PP: 39% (+4)
PSOE: 25% (-2)
VOX: 11% (-3)
Más Madrid: 10% (-2)
Podemos: 9% (+4)
Cs: 4% (-1)

Coalitions:

PP+VOX: 50.1
Left: 44.4

PP+VOX+Cs: 53.7
Left: 44.4

[Skye]

>"Old money" urban areas, basically close to the city centre in upper class 19th century expansions (example: Madrid's Salamanca neighbourhood)
>New suburban developments, with lots of young professionals (example: Much of Northern Madrid, like for example Las Tablas)
>Suburban developments for the super rich (example: The towns immediately to the west of Madrid: Las Rozas, Majadahonda, etc)

Funny you mention this, since a few weeks ago I calculated how the PAUs of Madrid voted. We have data for the municipalities and neighborhoods of Madrid, but the PAUs (with the notable exception of the Ensanche de Vallecas, which is its own administrative neighborhood) are contained/split in larger administrative neighborhoods. For the November 2019 General election, we have:

PAUs to the north of Madrid:

Montecarmelo: Right 71.8, Left 26.6
Las Tablas: Right 68.8, Left 29.3
Sanchinarro: 65.4, Left 32.4

PAUs to the south of Madrid:

Ensanche de Vallecas: Left: 55.0, Right 43.4
PAU of Carabanchel (La Peseta): Left 50.3, Right 47.2

In all of them, Cs got double digit performances, better than the 9% they got in the Community of Madrid.

There is a notable absence here, which is Valdebebas. As it turns out, Valdebebas shares a majority of its precincts with other neighborhoods that don't belong to the PAU. The 2 precincts that are entirely contained within the development, however, voted 69.7-28.2 for the right.

[Skye]

Funny you mention this, since a few weeks ago I calculated how the PAUs of Madrid voted. We have data for the municipalities and neighborhoods of Madrid, but the PAUs (with the notable exception of the Ensanche de Vallecas, which is its own administrative neighborhood) are contained/split in larger administrative neighborhoods. For the November 2019 General election, we have:

If I remember correctly,  places like Sanchinarro or Las Tablas had Cs pluralities in April 2019 general elections. It'd be interesting to collect the same data for the May 2019 regional elections,  which presumably recorded strong Cs performances in the PAUS as well, in order to measure the Ayuso landslide and the Cs demise (or small transfers to rhe PSOE, in case they exist). Party vote is more interesting than block vote, given that the transfers between the left and the right are mininal in polarized environments (the same rules for Catalonia with the pro-independence block and the rest of parties)

I'll probably do it in the next few weeks before the election takes place. It's just that I have to do it manually, and that takes time. But yes, Cs swept all of the PAUs in the north and won a few precincts in the PAUs of the south in the 2019 April General and May Regional elections.

Here's the Cs % in each PAU for the 2019N elections:

Montecarmelo: 14.5%
Las Tablas: 16.6%
Sanchinarro: 14.3%
Vallecas: Left: 12%
Carabanchel: 11.4%

Thing is Cs polling at like 5% currently. The 9% benchmark they had (their Nov. 2019 result) was already low enough. So if anything, they're in danger of getting into single digit performances in the PAUs for this election.

[Skye]

Even if the CIS gives the left inflated %s, the possibility of Cs and VOX failing to reach the 5% threshold should terrify Ayuso. The left would have a real shot at getting a majority of the seats. It wouldn't even take these %s to get there.

[Skye]

I find it funny how even in the most left wing neighborhoods of Madrid, the right wing parties will still find a way to get like over 30% of the vote. That's weak, sure, but it's a non-negligible number. Even in Puente de Vallecas, the district where the left is strongest, IIRC the right got like a third of the vote. That's still a better showing that what left wing parties get in the uber conservative strongholds where they can easily drop into the 20s or even 10s in certain neighborhoods.

Even down to the precinct level. I checked, and for the Nov. 2019 General Election, there were 120 precincts that gave the right wing parties overall over 80% of the vote. Wanna guess how many precincts gave the left wing parties more than 80% of the vote? Zero.

[Skye]

I've already seen a few of the posters. I'll upload pics of them once I've gotten at least one from each party.

[Skye]

Isabel Díaz Ayuso claims that people suffering economic hardship and looking for food in the "hunger queues" before organizations like Caritas are a class of subsidized loafers, created by the leftwing government for clientelistic purposes.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if she had also mentioned the existence of "welfare queens". This woman is the likely winner of the upcoming Madrid regional election. Those who understand Spanish can hear the words of Ayuso in the video posted in the tweet below:

Who is this 'Ayuso' you speak of, good sir? I only know of △yuso:

[Skye]

I just passed through the Sol station to take a pic of that poster in question, but I didn't see it. Really appalling stuff.

[Skye]

The VOX poster in Sol was vandalized alright LMAO

[Skye]

snip

There's a grand total of 11 precincts where VOX crossed the 30% line in the city (not the Community, I don't have precinct data for that) during that election. Aside from the ones you mention, there's also:

-Two in the wealthy Valdemarín neighborhood (it's composed of three precincts). They got 31.3% in one and 30.2% in the other.

-Two in the Salamanca district. One is in the uber wealthy part of Salamanca, the Recoletos neighborhood (04-010), they got 31% there. The other is in the Guindalera neighborhood, the northeasternmost precinct in Salamanca (04-080) where they got 30.6% of the vote.

-The remaining four are in a section of the Campamento neighborhood of the Latina district (10-156,157,158,159). They correspond to a residential area near La Dehesa, what seems to be a sports complex for the military (?), I'll assume the people who live here are mostly members of the military or their families, I dunno. Vox got 34-35% of the vote in three of the precincts but lost them to the PP, and won one of them with 38.3% of the vote, in the only section of the neighborhood that is composed of single family houses. The street names for that precinct are "Military Colony of Cuatro Vientos", so surprise surprise.

[Skye]

No matter that Vox is showing its true face, business as usual. Pollster Narciso Michavila believes recent events won't change the outcome and takes for granted the right will win the elections. Michavila is a conservative with a good reputation in the polling Industry

I read that Michavila believes that the PP will win all the districts of Madrid. I see that as so... unlikely? I mean, the PP is well positioned to come in first place in a majority of the districts of the city, even in some left-wing strongholds like Villa de Vallecas or Vicálvaro, but winning Puente de Vallecas is borderline impossible. It would take a perfect storm (and then some) for that to happen.

[Skye]

No matter that Vox is showing its true face, business as usual. Pollster Narciso Michavila believes recent events won't change the outcome and takes for granted the right will win the elections. Michavila is a conservative with a good reputation in the polling Industry

I read that Michavila believes that the PP will win all the districts of Madrid. I see that as so... unlikely? I mean, the PP is well positioned to come in first place in a majority of the districts of the city, even in some left-wing strongholds like Villa de Vallecas or Vicálvaro, but winning Puente de Vallecas is borderline impossible. It would take a perfect storm (and then some) for that to happen.

I think it's feasible the PP wins a plurality in Puente de Vallecas or Vicalvaro, providing the rightwing block vote is concentrated in that party and the leftwing vote dispersed between three lists.  Michavila believes the PP margin over the PSOE will be more than 20% in all the region. However, it seems impossible to me the parties right of the centre win a majority in these districts,  especially in a high turnout scenario

FWIW, these are the %s obtained by each party and ideological bloc during the 2019 regional election in the Districts of Madrid:



The PP is bound to cannibalize the lion's share of that Cs %, and the city is more likely than not going to swing to the right so the PP's % will grow a bit more (likely at the expense of the PSOE). Even then, the VOX % might not move too much, if at all, so as you can see it just might be enough for the PP to win a plurality in Villa de Vallecas, but not nearly enough for a plurality in Puente de Vallecas.

[Skye]

I heard the results of a poll El País will release tomorrow

PP 59 seats (41%)
PSOE 28 (19%)
MM 25 (17%)
Vox 13 (9%)
UP 11 (8%)
Cs 0

PP and Vox have a majority. Strong PP result. The PSOE is still in free fall, with MM on the rise.  Vox and UP are stagnant. Cs disappears

I know the PSOE has been falling in the polls since the campaign began, but damn, I'd be quite the upset if Más Madrid overtakes it.