Socialists score

Spain’s Socialists score big election victory

PM Pedro Sánchez will have still have to team up with other parties to stay in power, and has several options.

By DIEGO TORRES

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Socialists scored a big victory in Sunday’s national election, though they will still have to seek coalition agreements to stay in power.

With over 99 percent of the ballots counted, the Socialists won about 29 percent of the vote and 123 of the 350 seats in parliament — a huge step up from the 85 seats they now have. This puts them well ahead of the second-placed conservative Popular Party on 66 seats. The liberal Ciudadanos won 57 seats, the far-left Podemos and its allies 42 seats, and the far-right Vox 24 seats.

Sánchez’s victory — in line with prior poll predictions — makes him the only viable candidate for prime minister, with no alternative on the right able to secure the 176 seats needed for an absolute majority.

“The future has won and the past has lost,” Sánchez told cheering supporters on Sunday from the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid. “We’ve sent the world a message,” he said. “We can beat the reactionaries and the authoritarians.”

The Socialist leader now has several possibilities in forming a coalition. His party could rely on the support of Podemos — which has vowed to cooperate — plus some small regional parties including Basque nationalists to form a majority.

With the vote count yet to be finalized, it isn’t yet clear if Sánchez will also need the backing of Catalan pro-independence parties for this option, which would make things more complicated.

Another potential coalition option for Sánchez is to join forces with Ciudadanos, which came a close third in the election, about 1 percentage point behind the Popular Party. Together, the Socialists and Ciudadanos have 180 seats — but forming a coalition would require liberal leader Albert Rivera backtracking on his campaign promise to never support a Socialist government.

That seems unlikely, with Rivera again ruling out working with the Socialists, telling supporters it is “bad news” that Sánchez will govern with Podemos, and congratulating his party on having made “a qualitative leap to lead the opposition.” Ciudadanos increased its vote by 30 percent and nearly doubled its seats compared with the previous election in 2016.

In his victory speech, Sánchez left his options open. “We’re going to lend our hand to all political forces within the constitution,” he said.

Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias demanded a left-wing coalition government, telling reporters: “We are an indispensable force for there to be a left government in Spain.” Podemos lost a quarter of its votes and 40 percent of its seats in the chamber.

Experts say efforts at coalition-wrangling in the country could take longer because of the upcoming local, regional and European elections on May 26, with parties unwilling to declare their hand until the end of the electoral season.

Right fragments

The big loser of the night was new Popular Party leader Pablo Casado, whose conservative party lost half its vote share and half its seats in comparison to the previous 2016 ballot under the leadership of former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

“The result has been very bad,” Casado told reporters Sunday, arguing the fragmentation of the right had penalized his party. He vowed to continue to work to reverse the situation.

Sánchez became prime minister last June when he won a motion of no confidence in Rajoy with the help of Podemos and Basque and Catalan nationalists. He called Sunday’s snap election after Congress rejected his 2019 budget plan.

Sunday's victory was the Socialists' first in a general election since 2008, but it was also a big win for Vox, the first far-right party to win seats in the national parliament since 1982. Combined with Ciudadanos' close third-place finish behind the PP, this paves the way for more competition on the right.

But the rise of Vox seems to have worked to Sánchez's advantage, mobilizing supporters of both the left and regional nationalists, while cannibalizing former conservative voters.

Sánchez used the threat of the far right to rally his supporters to the ballot boxes during the campaign. "This is a very threatening reality we need to avoid," Sánchez said of Vox during a TV debate last week. "I thought [Donald] Trump wouldn’t win, and he won, I thought Brexit wouldn’t happen, and it happened."

Turnout was nearly 76 percent, over 9 percentage points more than the previous ballot in 2016.

During the campaign, Sánchez hit back against criticism of his social proposals and his record in office by arguing that allowing the three main parties on the right — the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox — to gain a ruling majority would set the country back by 40 years.

“We can choose a country with more social justice or more inequality, with cleaner governance or more corruption, with better co-existence or with the entrenchment of territorial confrontation,” he said.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal told supporters on Sunday that from now on, "24 deputies will defend the pride of being Spaniard" within the parliament.

Electoral arithmetic

Sánchez also benefited from an electoral system that tends to give the front-runner bonus seats, especially in the least populated provinces of the country. The Socialist Party won 29 percent of the vote but 35 percent of the seats in parliament.

The two parties on the left (the Socialists and Podemos) won a combined 43 percent of the vote and 165 seats, while the three parties on the right won 42 percent of the vote and 147 seats.