The results of the Spanish elections are as follows:
– The mainstream Right People’s Party (PP) received 136 seats;
– The mainstream Left Socialist Party (PSOE) received 122;
– VOX got 33;
– Sumar, which is filling the space once occupied by Podemos on the far (postmodern) Left, got 31.
The PSOE’s higher-than-expected showing is largely due to the fact that some regions have seen local parties deflate (as in the case of Bildu in the Basque Country and ERC in Catalonia), with their voters moving to the Socialists as the safer, consolidated option for keeping VOX and the PP out of government.
Concerning the math: an electoral majority requires 176 seats, which means that no one has a clear path forward to govern. The prospect of new elections looms, but we may consider possible coalitions.
The PP and VOX cannot govern alone. It may be that the regional parties UPN (Unión del Pueblo Navarro) and CC (Coalición Canaria) will support the PP and the presidential investiture of its leader, Núñez Feijóo, but this is not guaranteed, and with a single seat each, it would not make enough for a parliamentary majority anyway. The other party to which the PP can appeal, given a precedent of support during past administrations, is that of the (right-wing) Basque nationalists, the PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco). Between these five parties, a coalition would indeed have exactly 176 seats.
Such a formula for the PP to govern with a majority in parliament, however, requires VOX to cross a red line. Abascal has made it clear that he would never support a government that included the PNV (Abascal is Basque, grew up in the Basque Country, and remembers the tepidness with which the PNV treated ETA terrorism).
As for the PSOE, it could cobble together the requisite seats by entering into a coalition with assorted far Left and separatist parties (including the former, but unrepentant, ETA terrorists of EH Bildu).
It is with such alliances (dubbed a “Frankenstein” coalition by its opponents), that the incumbent PM Sánchez has been governing thus far, and there is no reason to suppose he will not try to reconstitute it.
The PP, for its part, may reach out to the Socialists. This is not a possibility political analysts have taken too seriously, but PP leader Núñez Feijóo has said he would prefer a grand coalition between the two main parties over having to associate with VOX.
On the subject of political analysts: these should take time to reflect on why the election results represent such an upset with respect to both exit polls (by social metric agencies GAD3 and SigmaDos) and to the recent nationwide municipal elections, in which the PP and VOX did very well.
This contrast may add to a relatively widespread (but low-intensity) notion among some sectors of Spanish society that elections in Spain always include some degree of fraud in favor of the Left. During these elections, for example, hundreds of votes for VOX were reportedly deemed invalid in Navarra because they were in Castilian, not Basque (which is obviously not an actual requirement).
The overrepresentation of regional separatists in Spain’s national parliament, which affords the Socialist party a chance at forming its “Frankenstein” coalition, is due to the special statutes enjoyed by the Basque Country and Catalonia, as well as a gerrymandered electoral map which, in the Catalan case at least, favors areas where the separatists are stronger.
Unfair as this may be to voters from other regions, and to non-separatist Basque and Catalan voters, it is simply the arrangement that Spanish democracy opted for.
In the past, the PP has commanded sufficient electoral majorities to have altered this, but chose not to. Were the PP to govern now, it is unlikely that it would earnestly try to resolve the asymmetries of the Spanish system, especially with a leader like Núñez Feijóo, who has been moderately sympathetic towards regional nationalism throughout his career and whose defense of Spain is not characterized by patriotism, but by a bland technocratic statism.
