Power corrupts. Even if it is not absolute. The showy Mediator case, co-starring a handful of middling politicians, is a good example of this. And at the same time, it is also a sample of the political and media amplification that any episode of corruption can acquire if it is accompanied by images that are not very edifying. From there, the question is limited to the electoral impact that this type of case can have on the voting expectations of the affected party: the PSOE.
However, Spanish society has surely changed its attitude when dealing with this type of conduct. More than three decades ago, when the main scandals that affected the Socialist Party broke out, the electoral sanction was slow to take place and, moreover, it was mediated by the context of an acute economic crisis.
For example, the Juan Guerra case (an official office used by the vice president's brother for his business) did not immediately translate into visible electoral punishment: the PSOE achieved an overwhelming absolute majority in the 1990 Andalusian elections. But four years later, and after the outbreak of the Roldán cases (collection of commissions and theft of reserved funds from the direction of the Civil Guard) and Filesa (of irregular financing of the PSOE), Andalusian socialism gave up 11 points.
And in 1995, the combination of scandals, economic crisis and unemployment led the PSOE to reap a defeat of unprecedented magnitude in the regional and local elections. He lost communities like Madrid and Valencia and ceded power in dozens of provincial capitals. However, months later, in the general elections of March 1996, the Socialists came close to drawing a tie with a PP that did not show the effects of its own scandals, such as the Naseiro case (of illegal financing and a true genetic antecedent of the Bárcenas case).
In short, public opinion at the time evaluated corruption with some skepticism and took its time before responding with an electoral sanction. And high party loyalties also played a part.
Certainly, when those cases broke out, up to a third of Spaniards mentioned corruption as one of the main problems. However, those red lights suddenly went out in the spring of 1996, after the replacement in the Government and the definitive overcoming of the economic crisis. From that moment on, and although the cases that affected the PP were frequent (including a dark episode of turncoat in Madrid that allowed the popular to save the presidency of the community in 2003), corruption disappeared from the radar of public opinion.
And although the first splashes of the Gürtel case date from 2009, that shadow did not prevent the absolute majority of the PP in 2011, in the face of a PSOE dismasted by the economic crisis and the adjustment policies of Rodríguez Zapatero. What's more: despite the accumulation of evidence and the irruption of the other great scandal of that time (the fraudulent You are that affected the Andalusian PSOE), corruption as a problem did not begin to emerge until 2012.
In fact, socialism saved its continuity in Andalusia in the elections of that same year. In turn, and despite the large electoral losses (of almost four million votes), the PP came first in the general elections of December 2015 and even improved its result in the electoral repetition of 2016 (it recovered more than 700,000 votes and was garnered 33% of the votes).
These outcomes coincided with sustained levels of concern about corruption that reached or even exceeded 50% of those consulted by the CIS. A true record. And even so, the PP resisted while new episodes that directly affected this party accumulated. Instead, the leftist electorate ended up split in two and left the PSOE on the brink of the abyss in the face of some emerging acronym: Podemos.
In reality, the political class began to be seen as a problem at the beginning of the last decade, when more than a quarter of those consulted included it among the three main concerns. And although with a different formulation, since September 2019, 50% of citizens point to politicians and politics as a problem (a rate that rises to 90% among the most conservative electorate).
With the irruption of the Mediator case –since the episodes that have been splashing the PP seem politically amortized–, corruption as a problem has doubled its percentage in one month, to close to 10%. But it is still below the rates that were registered before or even during the first year of the pandemic.
Is it too soon (and not sufficiently important) for the corruption that has come to light to acquire statistical significance and result in an electoral sanction? Or can the opposite occur in a context of diminishing partisan loyalties? Will it affect the left more and especially in the regional ones, but with less impact in the general ones? Or will everything depend on the place it occupies on the agenda when the elections are held? It should not be forgotten that 40% of voters decide their vote during the two weeks of the campaign.
