About 37.46 million Spaniards will go to the polls this Sunday to elect their representatives to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. More than 2.47 million voters have already voted by post. It is the highest ratio achieved in a general election since 2008 (first year with approved statistical records).
These snap elections, being held for the first time in mid-summer, will decide how Spain will be governed over the next four years in an intense battle between two blocs that represent, roughly speaking, the country’s two projects. On one side, there is the left bloc, led by the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and on the other, the right bloc, led by the People’s Party (PP).
The objective of the first is to reconfigure the progressive coalition government that has ruled the country since the last legislative elections, while the second seeks to change a political cycle and confirm the tendency of Spanish voters to want to vote for right-wing parties. It is moreover this beginning during the municipal and regional elections of last May, which precisely led the President of the Spanish government Pedro Sanchez to decide on these early imposed elections. The outgoing head of the Spanish executive thus puts back into play a chair that he could well lose in the event of the defeat of the left in this general election.
As in every electoral campaign, the political parties taking part in this election endeavored to present their electoral programs to the citizens. Barring a huge surprise Pedro Sanchez (PSOE) and Alberto Nunez Feijoo (PP) are the main standard-bearers of the two tendencies which compete for the “future governance of Spain” at the ballot box.
In a 272-page document entitled “Forward“ the PSOE presented its electoral program, with which Pedro Sanchez intends to continue to govern Spain for the next four years. Different projects are treated there such as pensions, housing, health, economic growth, diplomacy, equality… This is also the case of the PP which has chosen as the slogan of its electoral program for these early elections and which it considers as a boon ” A project serving a great country “. It is a document of a hundred pages containing 365 measures aimed at winning the votes of voters in the run-up to the legislative elections on 23 July.
The program by which the party, led by Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, aspires to achieve the Palace of La Moncloa includes a large number of reforms, amendments and repeals of laws, including the law on education, the system of election of the General Council of the Judiciary, the law of amnesty and the law of democratic memory, are all objectives among others, to be achieved during the investiture of its leader if there is investiture.
For its part, that of the PSOE takes stock of the achievements of the first government coalition before putting forward proposals that are clearly part of the continuity. “Forward” as a title is from the written commitment of the Socialist Workers’ Party, whose actions are divided into several main axes, such as those of the economy, health, governance…
In the economic sector, the Socialists propose to continue the increase in pensions according to the consumer price index, to reform the systems of active protection of the unemployed, an increase in the minimum wage for professionals, in order to maintain the level recommended by the European Social Pact…
As for the PP with regard to employment and economic activity, it calls for the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises, for a comprehensive reform of active employment policies, for a plan to combat female unemployment aimed at halving the participation gap in the labor market during its legislature, for the reform of the tax system…
In short, in this election campaign, everyone sang glory and praise to attract the voter as in a good self-respecting campaign. But for all that, it is not this little game that the results of the polls will be played on Sunday. And if thee PSOE holds its breath with the fear of a second debacle in just two months, with the added bonus this time of the eviction of La Moncloa, the right-wing parties (PP moderate right formation) and far-right, Vox (direct heir to the Franco dictatorship and close to other far-right Europeans), are jubilant at the idea of forming a victorious alliance.
And for good reason, the latest voting intentions draw a majority, perhaps even absolute, for the right and the far right in Spain if they were to ally. Alberto Feijoo’s party is well ahead of Vox in the polls with some 35% of voting intentions against fifteen to the far-right party led by Santiago Abascal. The leader of Vox was the leader of the PP, in the region of the Basque Country, for twenty years. That said, the polls will define tomorrow which tendencies, right or left and extreme, have been enough to convince a very demanding Spanish electorate.