Again opinion polls have been proved wrong. We had long learned that the PP was expected to win an overall majority either on its own steam or in coalition with Vox.
Pedro Sanchez has resisted the right-wing onslaught and now has the possibility of forming Government together with Sumar and independent parties both from Euskadi and Catalonia.
The great loser of the general election has been Vox who went from having 52 deputies at the last election to 33 today. What is noteworthy is that PSOE in Catalonia has more deputies than all other parties put together and that in Andalucia there has been an upsurge of support for the left parties PSOE and Sumar, despite the poor showing in the regional elections recently.
That will give the PP President of the autonomous region of Andalucia, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, sleepless nights thinking that in a subsequent regional election the fickleness of the same people who voted PSOE would have no qualms in ousting him and the right from power.
A much peeved Abascal, addressed his supporters from the balcony of his HQ to accuse Feijoo’s campaign for “el voto util” (the useful vote), for his bad results.
PSOE managed 122 seats while PP got 136. Though PP is the overall winner, it is insufficient to form Government with Vox, UPN and Coalicion del Pueblo Canario. The latter two parties only have one seat each.
Feijoo also addressed his supporters from the balcony of PP’s HQ declaring himself the winner of the elections and demanding that Pedro Sanchez should abstain in his possible investiture thus making it possible for him to become President of the Spanish Government.
This is, of course, anathema to Pedro Sanchez who, we may recall, when he was asked by his party to abstain in order for the investiture of Mariano Rajoy to proceed, he resigned the leadership of the party on the 1st October 2016, rather than acquiesce, stood for election for the leadership of the party in primaries and won and then proceeded to dethrone Rajoy via a vote of no confidence. So Feijoo’s expectations are pure wishful thinking.
There are two possible options to the present political scenario, and we start from the basis that Feijoo and Abascal have no possibilities of forming a Government. Either Pedro Sanchez manages to convince all the independent parties to support him and the PSOE coalition in order to form Government again and remain in La Moncloa, or he will block Feijoo until new elections are called in order to resolve the impasse.
New elections will likely not take place much before December. Meanwhile Feijoo has immediately turned from an offensive to a defensive mode and when politicians do that it is because they sense they have lost.