matthewbennett on Nostr: Is Spain about to get a bunch of regional coalitions between conservatives and the ...
Is Spain about to get a bunch of regional coalitions between conservatives and the far-right?
Centre party Ciudadanos is set to disappear and Podemos is mostly being replaced by Sumar.
Right then, the election campaign for Spain's local and regional elections is now underway. In two weeks, voters go to the ballot boxes across most of the country for the first time since the Covid pandemic. These elections will precede the national general election by about six months, depending on when the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), decides to call it. So these elections are a key national test for all the parties after four years of a socialist-communist coalition governing the nation and five years since Sánchez ousted the former conservative leader, Mariano Rajoy (PP), in a motion of no confidence in 2018. Political power is up for grabs in 8,000 town or city halls and 12 Spanish regions.
The general tenor of the polls seems to be that Spanish conservatives (Popular Party, PP) will mostly hold on to their current positions or make some gains. Notably, with two weeks to go, there is Isabel Diaz Ayuso (PP) in Madrid, who might achieve an overall majority, and Fernando López Miras in Murcia, where the Popular Party has somehow managed to remain in government continuously for the past 28 years, with not even a single courtesy parliament for anyone else to have a go. In Valencia, the Balearic Islands, La Rioja and Aragón, the PP might push ahead of the socialists although whether or not that will be enough to allow them to govern is another matter.
Also notable this year, after the explosion of new political options over the past ten years, is what is happening to the smaller parties on both sides. Podemos looks set to become an even more minor player in almost every region and Ciudadanos is now on course to lose all of their seats in the regional parliaments where voters are casting a ballot. It looks like those votes are going to the PP and Vox on the right, which means Santiago Abascal's far-right party will increase its seats almost everywhere, perhaps even doubling their current numbers. That will allow them to pressure PP candidates who win but short of an overall majority and stoke the polarised ideological debate going in to the national election later in the year, against the left but also in terms of whether or not the PP should be doing coalition deals with the far-right.
Would a series of regional wins for the right now, but split between the conservatives and the far-right, thus forcing coalition deals to be done, lead straight to the same conclusion nationally in December or energise the left and regionalists to vote against the idea?
Nationally, the PP is on 30-33% of the vote, far from a majority, and Vox for some reason is still flatlined on 15%, which is where they were at the last general election. They have been stuck at that level for the past nine months, after the PP rose once more under the new leadership of Feijóo. It was only just over a year ago that Abascal and his crew had begun to overtake a sinking PP on the right, then under the deficient captaincy of Pablo Casado. The abrupt swapping out of Casado for Feijóo has clearly worked from the Popular Party's point of view.
On the left, some polls are giving Yolanda Díaz's new party, Sumar, up to 12% or 13% of the vote, which would put them almost level with Vox and destroy what's of left of Podemos, pushed down to 4-6%. One poll in (right-wing) La Razón this week has the PSOE dropping to 22%, which would be a disaster for Sánchez. Generally speaking in the Spanish closed list proportional representation system, the more split the vote is on either side, the worse that side does in terms of seats overall, so the two-way split on the right (PP and Vox, with the disappearance of Ciudadanos) should edge out the three-way split on the left (PSOE, Sumar and Podemos, plus assorted minor fringe parties like Más País or United Left).
The major campaign themes over the past few weeks have been water and the drought situation for farmers, housing and sqautters, and the decision by Basque separatist party Bildu, which has supported the left-wing coalition nationally, to include 44 former ETA terrorists, among them seven convicted murderers, in their electoral lists for this month's ballots.
Centre party Ciudadanos is set to disappear and Podemos is mostly being replaced by Sumar.
Right then, the election campaign for Spain's local and regional elections is now underway. In two weeks, voters go to the ballot boxes across most of the country for the first time since the Covid pandemic. These elections will precede the national general election by about six months, depending on when the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), decides to call it. So these elections are a key national test for all the parties after four years of a socialist-communist coalition governing the nation and five years since Sánchez ousted the former conservative leader, Mariano Rajoy (PP), in a motion of no confidence in 2018. Political power is up for grabs in 8,000 town or city halls and 12 Spanish regions.
The general tenor of the polls seems to be that Spanish conservatives (Popular Party, PP) will mostly hold on to their current positions or make some gains. Notably, with two weeks to go, there is Isabel Diaz Ayuso (PP) in Madrid, who might achieve an overall majority, and Fernando López Miras in Murcia, where the Popular Party has somehow managed to remain in government continuously for the past 28 years, with not even a single courtesy parliament for anyone else to have a go. In Valencia, the Balearic Islands, La Rioja and Aragón, the PP might push ahead of the socialists although whether or not that will be enough to allow them to govern is another matter.
Also notable this year, after the explosion of new political options over the past ten years, is what is happening to the smaller parties on both sides. Podemos looks set to become an even more minor player in almost every region and Ciudadanos is now on course to lose all of their seats in the regional parliaments where voters are casting a ballot. It looks like those votes are going to the PP and Vox on the right, which means Santiago Abascal's far-right party will increase its seats almost everywhere, perhaps even doubling their current numbers. That will allow them to pressure PP candidates who win but short of an overall majority and stoke the polarised ideological debate going in to the national election later in the year, against the left but also in terms of whether or not the PP should be doing coalition deals with the far-right.
Would a series of regional wins for the right now, but split between the conservatives and the far-right, thus forcing coalition deals to be done, lead straight to the same conclusion nationally in December or energise the left and regionalists to vote against the idea?
Nationally, the PP is on 30-33% of the vote, far from a majority, and Vox for some reason is still flatlined on 15%, which is where they were at the last general election. They have been stuck at that level for the past nine months, after the PP rose once more under the new leadership of Feijóo. It was only just over a year ago that Abascal and his crew had begun to overtake a sinking PP on the right, then under the deficient captaincy of Pablo Casado. The abrupt swapping out of Casado for Feijóo has clearly worked from the Popular Party's point of view.
On the left, some polls are giving Yolanda Díaz's new party, Sumar, up to 12% or 13% of the vote, which would put them almost level with Vox and destroy what's of left of Podemos, pushed down to 4-6%. One poll in (right-wing) La Razón this week has the PSOE dropping to 22%, which would be a disaster for Sánchez. Generally speaking in the Spanish closed list proportional representation system, the more split the vote is on either side, the worse that side does in terms of seats overall, so the two-way split on the right (PP and Vox, with the disappearance of Ciudadanos) should edge out the three-way split on the left (PSOE, Sumar and Podemos, plus assorted minor fringe parties like Más País or United Left).
The major campaign themes over the past few weeks have been water and the drought situation for farmers, housing and sqautters, and the decision by Basque separatist party Bildu, which has supported the left-wing coalition nationally, to include 44 former ETA terrorists, among them seven convicted murderers, in their electoral lists for this month's ballots.