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

[Oryxslayer]

Just in case anyone missed it, in Murcia C’s is getting its first regional presidency (if you don’t count Melilla, where they govern with just 1 seat, à la Thuringian FDP). The PSOE agreed to support their leader in the region in exchange for C’s supporting a socialist mayor in Murcia’s capital.

Last time there has been a non-PP, non-PSOE regional president from a national party was in 1987, in the Canary Islands. Former PM Suarez’s CDS (Democratic and Social Center) was at the helm.

Murcia, 2019 general election
PP+Vox = 55%
Psoe + Up = 35%
Cs = 7,5 %




https://resultados.elpais.com/elecciones/2019/generales/congreso/15/

Murcian regional election, 2019

PSOE 32.5% 17 seats
PP 32.4% 16 seats
Cs 12.0% 6 seats
Vox 9.5% 4 seats
Podemos 5.6% 2 seats

The next regional election is in 2023

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Murcian_regional_election

It was understood when this all began that Murcia is arguably the best province for the Conservative parties, and that this emerging government is not exactly built to last. No need to restate the obvious.

[Oryxslayer]

Can someone explain to me how such a "liberal and multicultural" city like Madrid turns in big vote totals for Vox, especially around Chamberí and Salamanca.

My answer, admittedly as an outsider, is Franco. The cities boom period was during the heyday of the regime and one has to be already somewhat predisposed towards a authoritarian state to justify working in or around it's government. There are a lot of families in Madrid that got rich off the regime. This means that Madrid has a lot of people who are inclined to look backwards and see a "good old time with a few flaws," which of course is a common identity in post-Authoritarian regimes among the side that benefited from the state. Right attachment to Centralism and Castilian Nationalism of course are also inheritances of Franco, which means Madrid wound find herself even more aligned with those views. Reminder also that VOX is not your tropified "right-populist" party, it appeals to more middle-of-the-road types rather than struggling lower-income voters, and its appeals are more neo-Francoist than anti-Globalist.

[Oryxslayer]

I'm afraid I don't really follow Spanish politics - what is the upshot of these results?

The most likely outcome from these results is that Ayuso just secured her place as Casado's opponent for PP leadership, and likely his eventual replacement.

[Oryxslayer]

We have now reached the point where talk of a PP majority isn't out of the question, 65 of the necessary 69. Even if they miss it, a PP minority is guaranteed, as well as Ayuso's advancement upwards.

[Oryxslayer]

PP, Vox and UP overperformed and PSOE underperformed, let's see if PSOE abstain too Ayuso make a government without Vox, but I doubt it.

if VOX abstains then Ayuso has her minority cause PP > the combined left, and they will since the alternative for VOX is unimaginable.

[Oryxslayer]

Pablo Iglesias announces he’s retiring from politics.

Expected(?). He clearly wanted out which is why he stepped down, and he probably only stepped down to Madrid rather than retire to preserve Madrid Podemos.

[Oryxslayer]

I would also add to the explanation above that Madrid's boomtime and development was during the Franco dictatorship. The wealthy of Madrid were not just wealthy, they were likely wealthy off working in or adjacent to a authoritarian regime. So this is a region with a high concentration of the type of families who were raised in an environment that primed them to say "Franco was bad, but..." which has a high correlation with PP/VOX voting.

[Oryxslayer]

So at the end of the day the PP more or less traded C's for VOX, and a united PSOE opposition for a fragmented multiparty opposition. Seems ideal if you are Ayuso or support her path to power, which is certainly not ideal long-term.

[Oryxslayer]

The seemingly obvious answer would be for the ERC to ask for support from the PSC, but no idea if that type of government is even a feasible option anymore.

[Oryxslayer]

The first polls after the launch of Sumar are starting to be published and they are showing a divided leftwing vote, while the rightwing seems to be benefiting by the splits on the left:

It has gone under the radar over here, since this thread is rather quiet, but PP + Vox have actually been in potential majority range for quite a while. So I doubt a split left has dramatically changed that arithmetic, other than perhaps denying the both of them seats in some of the smaller constituencies.

[Oryxslayer]

So the C's to VOX and PP swing is old news by now, but can someone more in the know explain TxB? A cursory glace around says it's specifically anti-Comu.

[Oryxslayer]

Why does Podemos continue to stay independent from the left-wing alliance? They are going to split the vote

Pride. That’s why they’re not joining Sumar either.

The point is that, besides splitting the vote, the feud between Pablo Iglesias (Podemos / La Base / Canal Red) and Yolanda Díaz (Sumar) could be extremely costly,  in the sense that unity or disunity to the left of the PSOE will likely determine next general election: either progressive government backed by peripheral nationalists and regionalists, or a PP-Vox right-wing government.

Good post but I think one thing needs to be added: PP+VOX would still be on track for government even if Podemos and Sumar were one. its only been six weeks since the spit started being polled, and the Right was still leading by more than enough back then. If anything, the split seems to have drawn previously apathetic voters to one of the two, in a classic example of the phenomenon where the whole not does not equal the sum of its parts in multiparty parliamentary system.

Now obviously things can change in the upcoming months before the vote, but I think this expectation of defeat also feeds into the infighting. Cause a truly fierce internal political rivalry only can occur when there is no pressures to set aside ones differences, even temporarily, in the name of political power.

[Oryxslayer]

Strike while the iron is hot I guess. Cause if yesterday was not a wake up call, then defeat will come whether now or at the end of the year. The Right-Wing government will come unless everyone within the coalition learns to swim rather than sink, so hopefully some will take the appropriate message.

[Oryxslayer]

It seems that everyone here has a deep ignorance of Spain or do not know how to read data at all.
 
Sanchez has called elections to phagocytize Podemos and neutralize Sumar, not to help them haha. The PSOE has never, literally never had good relations with the parties to its left and if anything these elections have shown apart from an undisputed victory of the right, is that Podemos and Sumar are in a moment where a hard blow, could make them disappear.

With the calling of elections, Sanchez, although it is impossible for him to get another government, assures himself to keep more than 100 seats, maybe even to grow (as it happened in Valencia) thanks to the foreseeable disappearance of Podemos and to the poorly formed and badly organized project of Sumar.

The answer to this debacle has come with the electoral advance. According to the PSOE, in this way Sánchez manages to neutralize "internal criticisms". In addition, he forces "the left to come to an agreement quickly". In that sense, Sánchez seeks to agglutinate the left-wing vote in the face of the wear and tear of the battle waged by Podemos and Sumar, of Yolanda Díaz.

"It is difficult for anyone to ask for his resignation now," they recognize in the PSOE. "The party has to stay in electoral mode and mobilize to avoid another disaster." "If, in addition, there is no agreement to our left, the president will kill Podemos and all the parties of that spectrum," they add.

https://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/sanchez-psoe-rebelion-elecciones.html

I mean thats the threat to said parties/concession prize to PSOE if the parties/electorate do not behave as desired. The issue with riding that train of thought to it's conclusion though is that giving the electorate a (semi)proportional system in our multipolar and hyper-informed world - a environment where every voter actually knows as much as they individually need about all parties (which could be nothing for some) - means that there should always be a part that claims to be 'more left' than PSOE. Even if both Podemos and SUMAR are strangled in their separate cradles, someone new will show up just cause the electorate is there for it and sizable enough. PSOE would likely never attract those voters at the ballot box within the present system, only whatever party they vote for at the negotiating table. They therefore benefit most from keeping said party small enough to not be a rival, but large enough to pass the electoral hurdles to winning appropriate representation.

[Oryxslayer]

Saw the news in El Pais and was confused as f**k. Wtf?? Why now? I’m not super well versed in Spanish politics but is there a reason for this…

Now is when they are finally expected to not stand a chance at winning seats anywhere. However that hasn't stopped thousands of other minor parties with worse forecasts in worse electoral systems, so perhaps C's are trying to preempt humiliation.

[Oryxslayer]

But why exactly did Cs collapse so badly?

I would argue that the party was never meant to grow so large as they polled right before everything fell apart, because their coalition could not the survive extreme scrutiny and attention it would bring. C's was born in Catalonia, and the circumstances there determined who would join a coalition right of PSC. Conservatism in that arena means Spanish centralism with economic centrism to win the most centralist as possible. But those two fronts meant very different things once the party went national. Centralism is an extreme nationalist position in the rest of Spain, held by Franco Nostalgic voters who today are in VOX. Centrism becomes political Liberalism, which wins voters who are on the side of PP closest to and partially including parts of PSOE, depending on the circumstances, time period in question, and specifics said individual voter cares about.

The party always tried to appeal to both camps, but the fundamental incompatibility on the national scene was exposed only when the part was in a position to make the big policies which would win the approval of one group but anger the other.

[Oryxslayer]

This popped up in my timeline. Barest of PP-VOX majorities. Though I'm always hesitant when YouGov barges into new countries 

https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1677325697214296073?s=19

[Oryxslayer]

With no expected support from the regional parties, don’t PP and vox need an absolute majority of seats to form a government?

Yes, but not every minor party would naturally support a PSOE + others coalition. So there is grey area that could lead to among other things, a repeat election.

[Oryxslayer]

I mean overall the turnout seems fairly generically comparable to 2019, the sole exceptions of the favorite son Galicia boost, and the Catalonian Separatist abstention - which given it's size drags down everything.

I also wouldn't be surprised if the mail vote increase explains Madrid and a few other cities, both cause of people on vacation and cause said option seems popular everywhere it is offered among urban younger voters.

[Oryxslayer]

The Catalonia regionalist parties seems to be losing a lot of ground.  Is that part of the count bias?

Likely a little bit of column A and a little from Column B. Catalonia is the only place turnout went down when accounting for mail votes, and it went down a lot. The expectation is abstention from the separatists. If you remove those voters with nothing else happening then the combined Left would more likely then not get the lost seats since it has the next largest base. Which would make it easier for Sanchez to build an alternative government if PP+VOX end up less than 175, simply by pulling seats from the noncooperationists.

But the Right would also get a few seats from them as well. The classic maneuver of not participating in a free and fair election (in contrast to an authoritarian one with a predetermined result) and then complaining when the results don't have any place for your views.

[Oryxslayer]

Like in Sweden, I just don't understand why a "grand coalition" between the two major parties isn't a realistic option to keep the right-wing populists out of power? It's really much different from Germany or Austria.

Funny how this talking point is only ever used when the right win. PSOE could have entered a coalition with PP instead of radical left Podemos after the last election too.

Said talk was actually more common a few years back when C's, PP, and PSOE were all polling more or less the same amount of votes. But the C's handlers didn't like that, among many other reasons, and so they tried to become the new PP. And when that failed, the dominos fell one by one quite rapidly.


On another note, PSOE currently leads the vote in Madrid Commune and City for a moment there, albeit with <2% of the vote in.

[Oryxslayer]

The Catalonia regionalist parties seems to be losing a lot of ground.  Is that part of the count bias?

Likely a little bit of column A and a little from Column B. Catalonia is the only place turnout went down when accounting for mail votes, and it went down a lot. The expectation is abstention from the separatists. If you remove those voters with nothing else happening then the combined Left would more likely then not get the lost seats since it has the next largest base. Which would make it easier for Sanchez to build an alternative government if PP+VOX end up less than 175, simply by pulling seats from the noncooperationists.

But the Right would also get a few seats from them as well. The classic maneuver of not participating in a free and fair election (in contrast to an authoritarian one with a predetermined result) and then complaining when the results don't have any place for your views.

Rest assured there are seperatists and especially senior figures of the Procès who are hoping for a PP-Vox majority. It would be the resurrection they need after a shambolic few years since 2017 and divisions between ERC and Junts. The morale of civil society orgs like Omnium and ANC is at rock bottom too. They know Sanchez is destroying them through a trench warfare tactic.

If I was a separatist I would want as many seats as possible. Not to enter government,  but to keep forcing as many repeat elections.  But I'm not, so I can't comment with any determination.

[Oryxslayer]

Wait so we are at 68% of the vote counted but only 10% in Madrid? I know from following this before that is not normal,  it has to be the trains thing right?

It's also almost certainly why the combined left is doing noticeablely better. While we're still not headfirst a right-wing majority and more the MOE result more polls points too in the 170ish area, its where all the missing votes are, right?

[Oryxslayer]

Wait so we are at 68% of the vote counted but only 10% in Madrid? I know from following this before that is not normal,  it has to be the trains thing right?

It's also almost certainly why the combined left is doing noticeablely better. While we're still not headfirst a right-wing majority and more the MOE result more polls points too in the 170ish area, its where all the missing votes are, right?

Madrid is at 47%

Province, not city, unless El Pais  is missing a bunch of votes from somewhere.

Edit: looks like it was, all the missing stuff showed up in this update.

[Oryxslayer]

In a cruel irony it seems the future of Spanish politics might come down to Puigdemont

Well then there's only two options:

Keep forcing new elections to bring the government to your (from their perspective) unreasonable demands, or maybe the voters overall will change their mind without you.

Let PP and Vox in without actually voting in their favor, and play towards accelerationism.