Five more seats for the right and six less for the centre-left, without in any case there having been a decisive change in the correlation of forces to form a government. This is the joint balance of the two electoral repetitions registered so far in Spain, the previously unpublished ones of June 2016 and November 2019. In votes, the profit and loss account also favors the bloc led by the PP, with an advance of 1.7 percentage points, compared to the decline of 1.2 registered by the head of the PSOE.
These rises on the right appear closely linked to the participation that fell 4.6 points on average, attributable in principle to a greater demobilization of the left. In 2015 it stood at a medium level, within the framework of the previous trajectory, with 73.2%. In 2016 it fell to 69.8%. In 2019 the decline was more abrupt, because a high rate of 75.6% was reached in April, not far from that of 2004 after the Islamist attacks. Later, in November it returned to 69.9%.
The turnout at the polls on July 23 was 70.1%, very similar. However, it is a whole secret, available only to those who make the comparison well. It always takes the previous total results as a reference, which include the highly abstentionist Spain abroad and leads to misunderstandings, such as that this time participation increased by four points.
From the results it would be absurd to conclude that, as the right grew six seats in 2016, from 163 to 169, and four in 2019, from 149 to 153, with that average of five, in a hypothetical repetition PP and Vox will go from 170 to 175 , so that its candidate, in principle Alberto Núñez Feijóo, would be satisfied with the abstention of the Unión del Pueblo Navarro or the Canary Islands Coalition. Electoral mathematics has some constants, but the political arithmetic of a fact of the complexity of the failure of a legislature does not exist. It is an unpredictable process, although the two previous experiences offer some clue.
The most outstanding and paradoxical element of both returns to the polls resides in the fact that the solution that allowed the unblocking both after the June 2016 elections and after those of November 2019, already existed in December 2015 in one case and in April of 2019, in the other. What changed was the context. The first time was with the removal of Pedro Sánchez by the PSOE barons to allow the investiture of Mariano Rajoy. In the second, after the suicidal slam of Albert Rivera's Ciudadanos against the socialists, the acceptance by them of a coalition government with United We Can. What prevailed was the general panic of leading Spain to a third election.
If there is a third repetition, one could speak of a kind of second round to the Spanish, de facto and informal. Until now it has been characterized by parliamentary gattopardism, since everything changed to stay the same. Thus, it is essential how failure is staged. In sports, it would be said that it is a time in which myths are born and legends die, as happened in 2019 on the right with the rise, now greatly diminished, of the ultra Santiago Abascal and the self-destruction of Rivera blinded by the ring of power.
In this dramatization the script is clearly improvable. The Constitution does not set a deadline to start the countdown to the dissolution. It is the famous start of the clock, critical in 2016 when Rajoy did not want to go to the investiture, although now that problem is not in sight.
Faced with the gains of the right, always counting confluences such as Navarra Suma and those of Podemos and Más País, the left went from 161 to 156 in the first repetition and in the second, from 165 to 158. In votes it is more complicated , because in 2015 the right won by 3.7 points, but lost in deputies due to the brutal punishment of the electoral system to IU. Its absorption by Podemos in 2016 meant that the strong conservative rise did not translate into the absolute majority that it would have obtained with the new IU alone, as can be seen when simulating its results separately. In any case, in 2016 progressives fell by 2.5%.
While on its scale nationalism did achieve a great advance in 2019, from 8% to 10%, compared to its weak stability of 2015-2016, with regard to the two large blocks four years ago there was a successive tie at 43% .
Instead, thirteen days ago PP and Vox beat PSOE and Sumar by 16 seats and 1.4 points. But like a comic book hero, Pedro Sánchez escaped in extremis from the jaws of the monster, but, always maintaining the narrative tension, he was left in the worst possible alternative scenario, that of depending on Carles Pugidemont.
Even so, the progressive bloc is in a better position. He has the power. In both 2016 and 2019 he ended up being sworn in as acting president. He instilled in him the surprise of the result, induced by the resounding error of most of the polls, with those of the until then almost infallible Narcisco Michavila at the helm. If Junts rejects the PSOE and there are elections, the main campaign message of the right would decline, that of the traitor Sánchez who agrees with the enemies of Spain. However, there are no certainties, only indications, such as that the numbers of the repetitions favored the right.
