No legislature had ever accumulated so many judicial blows against the same government in office in such a short time. Yet the electorate has not shifted sides: the perfect storm that was going to sink Sánchez has found the PSOE bouncing back politically. A semester in which corruption demobilizes, but also, when the right tightens, re-groups the progressive electorate.
The inventory of the disaster. In January, José Luis Ábalos goes to prison. In June, the Supreme Court sentences him to more than twenty-four years for the mask case. Along the way, the indictment of Zapatero, the UCO raids, the Leire Díez case, the indictment of the director general of the Guardia Civil, the conviction of the president’s brother. Any manual of political communication would predict, given such accumulation, a sustained socialist collapse and a right that grows from the spoils.
“The electorate has not moved from the field: the perfect storm that was going to sink Sánchez has found the PSOE bouncing back electorally”
It has not happened. The right bloc, that is, the PP plus Vox, has spent half a year perched in a narrow band, between 48% and 52%, without the cascade of indictments altering that ceiling. The PSOE, which ought to be in retreat, is going on vacation bouncing back. The interesting thing is not “who wins” — that hardly changes — but why the vote behaves with such stubbornness for the average spectator.
The rebound
Let us compare the raw data from the two latest CIS barometers, June and July; the fieldwork for the latter began just over a week after Ábalos’s conviction. Logic would say July should be worse for the PSOE, but it is the opposite. In July, with the Zapatero and Leire Díez cases freshly exposed, the PSOE rose by 2.4 points in direct voting intention (from 23% to 25.4%). What inverted the trend? Not good news for Sánchez, but a move by the opponent: the PP–Vox agreement for the investiture of Moreno Bonilla in Andalusia and the offensive against the overseas vote, with Vox proposing suspending absentee voting by expatriates. The bloc axis reactivated in its clearest form, and the progressive electorate, scattered in June, regrouped.
“The interesting thing is not ‘who wins’ — that hardly changes — but why the vote behaves with such stubbornness for the average viewer”
Judicial news has demobilized some socialist voters, but it has not turned them into right-wing voters. As soon as the right reminds them of what they are voting against by allying with Vox, that voter reactivates. Sánchez’s rating barely moves (from 4.21 to 4.25 out of 10): there is no erosion and he maintains solid ratings both in evaluation and in preference as head of government, a category in which he nearly doubles Alberto Núñez Feijóo as the first choice according to the latest CIS (26.7% versus 13.9%).
The ceiling of the PP
If the left does not shift to the right — save for a smaller percentage — even under the worst judicial pressure, the consequence is revealing for the PP: there is no reservoir of voters by itself to approach an absolute majority. With the rival pursued by the courts, the PP does not grow. It even recedes. In GESOP it records 29.4%, the second-worst figure of the legislature, with the lead over the PSOE narrowing from 3.5 to 2.9 points. The average sketches a party stuck between 29% and 33% that has not converted into its own vote any of the adversary’s major scandals.
“Judicial news has demobilized some socialist voters, but has not turned them into voters for the right”
One of the explanations lies in leadership. Feijóo’s rating falls from 3.79 to 3.64, according to the CIS; those who have “no confidence” in him rise from 42.2% to 45.5%. In preference to preside the Government, he collapses to 13.9%, below Sánchez. The PP is sustained by loyalty — it retains two out of every three voters — but it does not widen its base. It has a floor, not a rising ceiling.
The result is a paradox: the PP can govern, but not on its own merits. It will do so, if at all, through bloc accumulation with Vox and by demobilizing the adversary. A borrowed majority.
Vox, the party that no longer capitalizes
Vox has grown in the medium term: from hovering around 17% in January to peaks of 20% in the spring, to end up back around 18%. That growth, however, is fed from the PP flank, not from a direct transfer from the PSOE or the left bloc. In the recent window, as noted, it slows: the CIS deducts half a point between June and July, for example. The slowdown coincides, according to GESOP, with the PSOE’s recovery among the young and the men, precisely where the far right has advanced.
“The PP can govern, but not on its own merits. It will do so, if it does, through bloc accumulation with Vox and demobilization of the adversary”
The added picture is that of two right-wing parties sharing space that is already mobilized: the vote that the PP loses goes to Vox, but does not leave the bloc. It is intra-bloc mobilization that confirms that the right competes to redistribute what it has — a highly mobilized electorate — while showing clear signs of an inability to broaden it.
The left: bleeding from within, regrouping from outside
The state of the left explains why the July rebound is possible. Its problem is not losing votes to the opponent, but how the vote circulates within its own space and how many people say they would attend hypothetical elections.
Sumar bleeds: retains between 30% and 40% of its voters, depending on the polling firm, and yields more than 22% to Podemos and almost 13% to the PSOE, in the latest 40dB barometer. That last figure is key: part of the vote fleeing the alternative left is not lost to abstention nor crossing to the right, it returns to the mother house. The rise of minor parties —from Adelante Andalucía to Se Acabó la Fiesta— completes a fragmentation picture that does not benefit the PP-Vox bloc.
“The right competes to redistribute what it has, a highly mobilized electorate, while showing clear signs of incapacity to broaden it”
That defensive regrouping is what the CIS barometer captures in July. It records in the same interval that the ‘vote always for the same party’ falls from 20.4% to 17.7% and the ‘depending on what suits best’ rises from 48.5% to 55.1%: a more fluid electorate. It loosens with discouragement and corruption; it re-forms with the PP–Vox pact. Its intensity is not controlled by its own party: it is administered by the opponent.
Society has not moved to the right
The absolute majority that today surveys project does not reflect an ideological shift. The evidence is clear: self-placement on the left-right scale remains at 4.72 in June and 4.70 in July, unchanged despite everything that has happened. Almost half of the sample places themselves on left positions; less than a third on the right.
“Spain remains, in ideological identity, a country of center-left. That it produces right-wing majorities is more a translation problem than a preference problem”
Spain remains, in ideological identity, a country of center-left. That it produces right-wing majorities is more a translation problem than a preference problem: the right converts almost all its sympathy into actual votes; the left loses a fraction along the way. The electoral system turns sympathy into votes; the left loses a fraction along the way. The electoral system amplifies that gap until it becomes decisive in medium and small provinces.
What the demographic stability reveals
For the right, the diagnosis is uncomfortable despite the advantage: they have the majority, but not the momentum. It is a bloc majority and fatigue, not conquest. For the PSOE, the diagnosis is bittersweet, but less catastrophic than described: its ceiling is set by demobilization, but its floor holds. The problem is that the lever of regrouping is not driven so much by him, but by the right when it embraces Vox — and this one with Donald Trump. For the alternative left, the analysis is the harshest: the space has become a donor of votes within its own bloc, without the capacity to articulate an alternative.
One year before the elections, the board remains almost where it started the course. Corruption erodes the morale of the progressive voter, but does not hand him over to the opponent: it disperses him when it intensifies and regroups him when the right tightens or perceives that its own are being unjustly pursued. The majority of the right remains there, intact, but rests on a progressive electorate that has not left and has only sat on the couch waiting for a better moment
