The Socialists sign the worst result: they lose three seats and remain more than 19 points behind the PP, but do not fall below the barrier of 30 deputies
Juan Espadas, the PSOE candidate for the Junta de Andalucía, the man chosen by Pedro Sánchez to try to regain power in a fetish federation for the party, said that the polls had to be thrown “in the trash” this 19-J. That didn’t happen. The polls confirmed the historical and social turnaround that all the polls predicted, gave the clear absolute majority to Juanma Moreno —freeing you from dependency on Vox—, and snatched from the PSOE its status as the leading force and hegemonic formation. A direct and severe blow to the lungs of a century-old formation. The voters clearly turned their back on the person who governed the Board for 37 years, although they didn’t completely humiliate him: your soil yielded a little more (up to 30 seats, three less than four years ago), but it did not collapse, as the latest studies indicated, the ones known on this electoral night. It was precisely that small consolation that gave Swords authority to anticipate that will remain as leader of the opposition in the next four years.
He does not resign or give up the leadership of the party in Andalusia, and Ferraz supports him. The argument is the same: he has only had “seven months” to build his alternative, and now he will have four years ahead of him to forge it and recover the trust of citizens. That does not mean that the data, the worst in history in his unequivocal electoral stronghold, be read as a resounding warning to Sánchez less than a year and a half before the general elections and eleven months before the decisive local and regional ones. The message was and is disturbing for the PSOE. The engine seizes and the heart fails: Andalusia.
The Socialists could hardly find breath in the figures of these regional elections of 19-J, worse than those left by Susana Díaz in elections that were already catastrophic. The defeat was expected, but not with such proportions. Absolutely. Swords obtained, with 99.68% scrutinized, more than 883,000 votesabout 127,000 less than in the elections of December 2, 2018. He thus slipped into unknown territory, under a million votessomething that had never happened before. But it is that this Sunday was, without a doubt, the worst result in the entire history of the PSOE-A: it had never seated only 30 deputies in the Andalusian Parliament, the PP had never taken it out 28 minutes. He had never been defeated in all the provinces. He had never ever lost Seville, its key and impregnable square. The populars, with 58 parliamentarians (three above the absolute majority) and 1.58 million votes (43.13%), they were ahead of the Socialists by more than 19 points and 698,000 ballots. And on top of that they won’t need Vox to govern, thus ruining the PSOE’s message that the PP (the PP of Alberto Nunez Feijoothey add) is attached to the radicals to achieve power.
In percentage, 24.09% was also the worst mark of all time. Swords, therefore, falls below the result of its predecessor, Susana Díaz, and signs a total disaster. The 66 deputies and 52.56% of the votes of the first autonomous elections, those of 1982, sounded like prehistory, two years after the referendum that granted the community the autonomous route by fast track and that seeded the party’s consecutive victories . The PSOE-A has always been first in the table in ten of the eleven elections held so far: all except 2012, in which Javier Arenas won (by only three minutes), but could not govern due to the sum of the left. He was also severely beaten in emblematic municipalities, such as Dos Hermanas or Alcalá de los Gazules, won by the PP. The PSOE’s only respite on this fateful night is that it has not slipped below the 30-seat slope. By the hair. In short, as they recognized from the Executive, the result of the PP had been “spectacular“. An unquestionable feat in 40 years of autonomy history.
The PSOE, which had repeatedly struck the message that Espadas was the real brake on the extreme right, found that it was Moreno who concentrated the useful vote and served as a fence against Vox: after gobbling up Citizens (the orange formation leaves the Autonomous Chamber and its leader, Juan Marín, announced his resignation from all organic positions), the president stopped the growth of the extreme right and of his candidate , Macarena Olona. The same community that propelled the Vox phenomenon four years ago is now puncturing its balloon. The alternative left, meanwhile, bleeds to death: of its previous 17 seats, it goes to only seven: the five of Por Andalucía and the two of Adelante Andalucía.
In Seville and Madrid, in separate statements without questions from the journalists, Espadas and Adriana Lastra, the deputy general secretary of the PSOE, blamed the poor results on the “demobilization” that Moreno had pursued. “When turnout is low, left tends to suffer“, lamented the candidate. But in reality the abstention this 19-J (41.64%) was lower than that registered in the previous elections (43.44%). Swords anticipated that he will not leave: “I am the head of the opposition and they will find me there in the next four years, defending the interests of Andalusians. We are going to make a forceful and effective State opposition to ensure that democracy is also a useful opposition”. Sánchez’s number two thanked the head of the PSOE-A for his “effort” in these elections “designed and called by the PP against him”, but the party “has not had enough time to consolidate an alternative“, and now “he will be able to launch a strong project to recover political hegemony.” “He deserves our recognition,” he stressed, making clear the support of the federal leadership.
#Live | Espadas says that now the role of the PSOE in Andalusia will be that of a “useful and effective opposition”: “We have not achieved the objective of mobilizing the electorate. When turnout is low, it is the left that usually suffers” pic.twitter.com/fZJyys0bOP
— Europe Press (@europapress) June 19, 2022
“Three Favorable Territories”
In Ferraz they reject the national readings and do not believe that the stability of the central government is affected, nor is Sánchez’s leadership diminished. Nor do they foresee changes in the Executive. Lastra explained that Moreno’s victory is due to the “path designed” by the PP to “change its image”, calling three elections (Madrid, Castilla y León and now Andalusia) in “three favorable territories“, but his” balance is low “, because he has not won any more communities and the PSOE “continues to lead the national polls.” “In our long history we have had better nights than tonight but also worse moments,” encouraged the number two .
The message is clear: we have to shield the president and think about the next stage, the one that the whole party considers key: the regional and municipal ones of 2023who expect to win, because their thesis is that citizens are rewarding, after the pandemic, all presidents (the exception was Catalonia, in which former Minister of Health Salvador Illa won), and that more and more differ according to the call. “All the regional governments have consolidated and people discriminate against the vote a lot,” they remark, recalling the bad data from Díaz in 2018 that did not correspond to the half million more votes that Sánchez got in the general elections of 2019. Thus, May 2023 will be the final exam before the general exams at the end of the year. Legislative that, they initial, are not going to advance.
From Andalusia the PSOE wants to turn the page as soon as possible. Unlike what happened in Madrid, where he was surprised by the debacle, here the address took defeat for granted (not of these dimensions), and does not want to recreate in it. He considers, yes, that he has achieved “save the furniture“, they pointed out in the federal leadership, although that may even be too happy a reading for some ballot boxes that have given the PP a historic victory. The one in which few leaders wanted to believe.
In Ferraz it was explained that the campaign nothing had gone wellthat Espadas had not been able to take flight because everything was against him, and in the end beat Diaz in primaries a year ago and he took over the reins of the powerful PSOE-A in November 2021, just seven months ago. The analysis is that the federation wasted a lot of time entangled in its internal affairs and let Moreno settle down and polish his profile as a moderate leader.
Executive sources acknowledged that now it’s time to “explain more” Government action and turn on all the machinery for May. “We are not in 1995,” they indicated. In other words, the PSOE is not at the same point as it was in that year, when it lost practically all of its territorial power in favor of the PP and served as a foretaste of defeat in the general elections of March 1996. The big question is whether that need for “impulse”, for “change of dynamics” that even in Moncloa they are already advancing, it will result in a remodeling of the Cabinet, as the party demands (and as it has already been installed in it). In the leader’s circle they insist that there will be no exits and entrances of ministers. But the president is always careful when moving his chips and likes to look for surprises.
Sánchez, as usual in regional elections, followed the scrutiny from Moncloa. Numbers two and three of the leadership, Adriana Lastra and Santos Cerdán, plus the secretary of Electoral Action, Javier Izquierdo and other members of the executive, the ministers of the Presidency, Finance, Health and Science, Félix Bolanos, Maria Jesus Montero, Carolina Darias Y Diana Morant, and the Secretary of State for Relations with the Courts, Rafa Simancas. Ferraz lived another black day. With the doubt, which will be persistent, that if this warning to the party will be premonitory for the generals for those who are only a year and a half away. The red lights in the PSOE, despite the string of arguments from the leadership, they turn on.