Pedro Sánchez’s horizon is complicated. If he already had enough with all the scandals surrounding his figure and that of his wife, Begoña Gómez, The negative results achieved by the PSOE in the recent European elections further complicate its term.
These are the twelve keys that explain the complex path that awaits the President of the Government in the coming months.
1. The government coalition loses three million votes
In the 2019 european electionshe PSOE got 7,369,789 votes with an electoral participation of 60%. In these of 2024ha lost more than two million votesachieving 5,261,293, with a much lower participation, 49%. Something similar, to a lesser extent, occurs with Addwhich has been collapsed. Five years ago Sumar did not exist and the Podemos-IU brand was presented, which obtained six seats and 2,258,857 votes. Today, separately, Sumar and Podemos achieve five seats and just over 1,400,000 votes between them. The difference is a loss of more than 800,000. Total, The government coalition has left almost three million votes behind, something unprecedented in national-level, single-constituency elections. They will try to reduce the debacle on the left by simply counting seats, since the PSOE has only lost one. But The objective data on citizen support is devastating and if the cold analysis of the data invites Sumar to a strategic change within the coalition, can complicate this unstable legislature for Pedro Sánchez.
2. The right surpasses the entire left together and the independence movement
For the first time in a European election, the aggregate percentage of the vote is higher on the righta sum of 48.3%, compared to the 47.17% that represents the aggregate between the PSOE and all its coalition and legislative partners.
3. The independence movement loses one and a half million votes
In the 2019 European elections, separatist and nationalist parties, which usually group together in different coalitions to take advantage of the single constituency and enjoy more opportunities with the proportionality of the D’Hondt Law, they achieved 2,903,664. It is true that there were municipal and regional elections in many Spanish regions, with an unusually high turnout that also favored the European polls. But in these 2024, demobilization, fatigue, distrust towards the identity issue as the only axis of political action and the leadership of ERC, Junts or the PNV themselves has left them globally with a total of 1,580,839 votes. That is, practically half. Especially striking is the case of Juntswhich from 1,018,435 votes five years ago, now has 443,275.
4. Sánchez saves the furniture but will complicate the relationship with the partners
Sánchez, after his first letter to the citizens during his five-day ‘retirement’, stated in La Moncloa that after the June 9 elections there would be a political “full stop” in Spain against hoaxes, ‘mud’… and against the independence of the judiciary and freedom of the media. Today, that ‘full stop’ can be for his own legislature. The worse results Sumar, ERC, Junts or the PNV have, the more the price that separatism imposes on the legislature increases.. Sánchez will also have a difficult time quelling the growing discouragement internal to the party with his way of managing the scandal of his wife, Begoña Gómez, or the risks that the amnesty is posing in its fight with the Courts to block its application. Sánchez will begin to verify after losing 2.1 million votes that patience is not eternal and that dissidence in the parties exists no matter how many years it spends hidden and gagged.
5. The right would have an absolute majority in general elections
With the results known last night, and even assuming that they are difficult to extrapolate to a general election, where participation is up to 25 points more, the truth is that the PP and Vox would add between 177 and 180 seats in all probability, if the votes were divided for the 52 provinces. The objective fact is that Sánchez would not be president of the Government today, not even with his current allies.
6. The regional weakening of the PSOE spreads
The PSOE has only won in Barcelona, Tarragona, Álava, Vizcaya and Navarra. In the vast majority of provinces the PP has done it, with a blue-tinted map, even in all the provinces of Castilla-La Mancha, where the popular have surpassed Emiliano García-Page’s PSOE by ten points. Castilla-La Mancha is the only autonomy in Spain in which the PSOE achieved an absolute majority in the last elections on May 28, 2023, pushed by the critical profile that Page leads against Sanchismo’s inconsistencies against amnesty or submission to separatism. In Asturias, another of the few autonomies governed by the PSOE, the PP surpasses the socialists by almost two points, when in 2019 the difference in favor of the PSOE was more than 19. There are 21 points that the PP has overcome the socialists in a traditional fiefdom of the left.
7. Electoral endorsement of the independence of the Courts in their fight against corruption
With these results and the weakening of the coalition, the judges and Courts immersed in multiple cases linked to Sanchismo – the attorney general, the revelation of data about Ayuso’s partnerhe ‘Begoña Gómez case’the complaint against Sánchez’s own brotherhe ‘Pegasus case’, ‘Koldo’etc. – have more arguments for not feeling that citizens do not punish corruption and endorses impunity.
8. The fragmentation of the right continues to be a risk for governing
It is nothing new that Sánchez is favored proportionally, in the distribution of seats, fracture of the right. He did it when PP, Ciudadanos and Vox existed, and he does it now, when another force joins in, La Fiesta Se Acabó, by ‘Alvise’ Pérez. The fragmentation of the vote in single-constituency elections has favored the three parties. However, in general elections the risk of once again verifying the ‘zero sum’ principle or accumulation of ‘garbage votes’ beneficial to the left would be reactivated. Today the sum would grant an absolute majority in general elections to the right. But the key is that Vox has set a minimum base of 1.6 million voters, regardless of the national elections, and a maximum ceiling of 3.2. The disappearance of Vox from the equation is simply an entelechy because it has strengthened a clearly irreversible voter base for the PP.
9. The CIS as a national manipulation factor
Little analytical comment can be made about their forecasts. Neither the system nor the methodology nor the sampling capacity of its surveys fail. Cooking fails, simply, because it is not about predicting anything, but to condition the vote by spreading the idea of a technical tie, or even a socialist victory. The PSOE spoke throughout the entire ‘comeback’ campaign and the CIS has limited itself to cheering and justifying that story. Result? Has not been correct in any relevant range of votes.
10. Elections as a plebiscite?
If so, Sánchez has lost it. Four points below the PP, 2.1 million votes lost, unusual abstention of the socialist voter, demobilization, null effect of his epistolary blackmail to the citizens… and the punishment of the alleged corruption that stalks him. If Sánchez aspired for the European Championships to be the wall that established where the Spaniards stand, with him or against him, he has verified that four points are two more than what Núñez Feijóo achieved in the 2023 general elections. And that His victimist speech, his harassment of justice and his ability to encourage fear of the right and the extreme right have failed him this time miserably..
11. The PNV becomes the third force in the Basque Country
The Internal reflection initiated by the PNV after its failure in the 2023 general elections it only served keep the pulse in the Basque elections from a few months ago, where it will be able to revalidate the majority with the socialists, still leaving Bildu as the opposition party for the moment. However, these European elections show that the cracks in the PNV have not yet been sealed. Bildu was the first party, with 226,911 votes in the Basque Country within the Ahora Repúblicas coalition; the PSOE, second party, with 225,084 votes, almost tied with Bildu; and the PNV, third with 194,532 votes, almost twelve points below its previous elections and barely 22% of the voters. The PNV needs the PSOE and the PSOE needs the PNV. But together, the weakening of their respective positions is eloquent. A complex dilemma to solve for a PNV in the process of internal renewal.
12. Alvise, the ‘foreign body’ in European women and a mobilizer of social networks
The European elections tend to be elections of less interest to the citizen and are even traditionally used as a way of punishing the big forces by giving votes to figures from public life who are not professional politicians. It is the case of ‘Alvise’ Péreza mobilizer of social networkswith a eminently young audiencewith provocative tone in his interventions, right-wing radical, populist already looking to be a agitator of European politics. Remember the ‘Ruiz-Mateos phenomenon’, when the businessman who owned Rumasa experienced the expropriation of his business and assets, and openly confronted the then socialist minister Miguel Boyer, and ended up as an MEP. The striking name of his party, ‘Se Acabó La Fiesta’, together with his capacity for continuous connection with two million people through social networks, has created a ‘community’ of faithful, more than 800,000, which has been awarded three seats. The determining factor will be to check if the loyalty of his electorate grows and Pérez proposes a broader political project or, Most likely, it is just a one-off phenomenon. in elections like the European ones and that their electorate is distributed in general elections among other parties.
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