No legislature had accumulated so many judicial blows on 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 rebounding in electoral terms. 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 Civil Guard, the conviction of the president’s brother. Any manual of political communication would predict, given such accumulation, a sustained socialist collapse and a right fattening on the spoils.
“The electorate has not shifted fields: the perfect storm that was going to sink Sánchez has found the PSOE bouncing back in electoral terms”
It has not happened. The right bloc, namely the PP plus Vox, has spent half a year stuck in a narrow band, between 48% and 52%, without the cascade of indictments altering that ceiling. The PSOE, which should be retreating, goes on vacation rebounding. 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’s compare the raw data from the two latest CIS barometers, June and July; the fieldwork for the latter began a little more than a week after Ábalos’s conviction. The logic would say July should have been worse for the PSOE, but it is the opposite. In July, with the Zapatero and Leire Díez cases newly erupted, the PSOE rose 2.4 points in direct voting intention (from 23% to 25.4%). What reversed the trend? Not good news for Sánchez, but a move by the opponent: the PP-Vox accord for Moreno Bonilla’s investiture in Andalusia and the offensive against overseas voting, with Vox proposing to suspend postal voting for expatriates. The bloc-axis reactivated in its clearest form, and the progressive electorate, dispersed in June, regrouped.
“What is interesting is not who wins — that hardly changes —, but why the vote behaves with this stubbornness for the average observer”
The judicial news has demobilized some socialist voters, but it has not turned them into right-wing voters. As soon as the right reminds them, by teaming up with Vox, what one is voting for, that voter reactivates. Sánchez’s approval barely moves (from 4.21 to 4.25 out of 10): there is no erosion and he maintains solid numbers both in approval and in preference as head of the government, a category in which he almost doubles Alberto Núñez Feijóo as the top choice according to the latest CIS (26.7% versus 13.9%).
The PP’s ceiling
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 pool from which it could approach an absolute majority on its own. With the rival pursued by the courts, the PP does not grow. It even retreats. In GESOP it records 29.4%, the second-worst figure of the legislature, with its lead over the PSOE narrowing from 3.5 to 2.9 points. The average paints a party stuck between 29% and 33% that has not converted any of the adversary’s major scandals into its own vote.
“The judicial current has demobilized some socialist voters, but it has not turned them into right-wing voters”
One explanation lies in leadership. Feijóo’s rating falls from 3.79 to 3.64, according to the CIS; those who have “no confidence” rise from 42.2% to 45.5%. In preference to leading the Government, his support collapses to 13.9%, below Sánchez. The PP is sustained by loyalty — two of every three voters remain — 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 it does, by bloc accumulation with Vox and by demobilization of the opponent. A borrowed majority.
Vox, the party that no longer capitalizes either
Vox has grown in the mid term: from around 17% in January to peaks of 20% in spring, then returning to about 18%. Yet, that growth feeds off the PP flank, not from a direct transfer from the PSOE or the left bloc. In the recent window, as expected, 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 among men, precisely where the ultranationalist 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 through demobilization of the opponent”
The added snapshot is of two right-wing parties sharing a space already mobilized: the vote that the PP loses goes to Vox, but does not exit the bloc. It is a mobilization within the bloc that confirms that the right competes to redistribute what it has, a highly mobilized electorate, while showing clear signs of an incapacity 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 turn out to 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 poll. That last figure is key: part of the vote fleeing from the alternative left does not vanish into abstention nor cross to the right; it returns to the mother party. The entry of smaller siglas — 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 an incapacity to broaden it”
That defensive regrouping is what the CIS barometer captures in July. It records in the same interval that “vote always for the same party” falls from 20.4% to 17.7% and “vote for whatever is most advantageous” rises from 48.5% to 55.1%: a more fluid electorate. It loosens with disheartenment and corruption; it reconstitutes with the PP-Vox pact. Its intensity is not controlled by its own party: it is administered by the adversary.
Society has not become rightward
The absolute majority projected by today’s polls does not reflect an ideological shift. The evidence is: self-placement on the left-right scale remains at 4.72 in June and 4.70 in July, unmoved despite everything that has happened. Almost half of the sample places itself on left positions; less than a third on the right.
“Spain remains, in ideological identity, a country of the center-left. That it produces right-wing majorities is more a translation problem than a matter of preferences”
Spain remains, in ideological identity, a country of the center-left. That it produces right-wing majorities is more a translation problem than a matter of preferences: the right converts almost all its sympathy into real votes; the left loses a fraction along the way. The electoral system translates 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: it holds 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 portrayed: its ceiling is set by demobilization, but its floor holds. The problem is that the lever for regroupment is driven not so much by it, but by the right when it embraces Vox — and Vox embraces 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 from the elections, the board is almost where it began. Corruption drags down the morale of the progressive voter, but does not hand him over to the adversary: it disperses him when pressure rises and re-groups him when the right tightens or perceives that its own are being unjustly persecuted. 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.
