In the early parliamentary elections in Spain, a close result is emerging: the governing social democratic PSOE and the conservative Partido Popular party are close together. Both would be dependent on coalition partners.
According to interim results, the right and left camps are surprisingly even in the parliamentary elections in Spain. After counting more than 67 percent of the votes, the opposition conservative People’s Party (PP) was neck and neck with Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s socialist PSOE. According to state television broadcaster RTVE, the PP, led by Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, has provisionally 131 seats and the PSOE 128 seats.
For an absolute majority in the 350-seat House of Representatives, 176 seats are required. According to the interim results, it would not be enough for Nuñez Feijoo’s PP with the votes of the right-wing populist party Vox, which according to the interim results has 33 seats. The left-wing collection movement Sumar therefore achieved 30 mandates.
Poll saw right-wing parties ahead
A poll by GAD3 for media group Mediaset, based on the intentions of 10,000 voters over the past few days, had indicated that the PP could win 150 and Vox 31 seats. If the PP and Vox were to form an alliance, it would be the first time since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975 that a right-wing party would have direct influence on government action.
Sanchez has ruled since 2018
The election was originally scheduled for December. Sanchez called new elections in late May after his party suffered a defeat in local and regional elections in May.
The PSOE has ruled Spain since 2018. Sanchez was the first politician in the country to overthrow an incumbent government by a motion of no confidence. Since January 2020 he has governed in a minority coalition with the left-wing Podemos party, which emerged from the protest movement against austerity policies.
A total of 37.4 million Spaniards were called to vote. At 4:00 p.m., voter turnout was 53.12 percent, which was almost four percentage points less than in the previous parliamentary election in 2019. However, the 2.47 million postal voters were not yet included in the voter turnout now mentioned. This number of postal voters is a record. It is due to the fact that the election was held for the first time in the middle of summer.