The Popular Party won the Andalusian elections this Sunday with 53 deputies but lost the absolute majority by two seats. The president of the Junta and PP candidate for re-election, Juan Manuel Moreno, acknowledged that they had not achieved an “honor roll, but an outstanding grade.” Meanwhile, the PSOE obtained the worst result in its history in the region by securing 28 deputies. The socialist candidate, María Jesús Montero, admitted that these were “not good results.” “We take notes and will analyze in detail the vote cast by the Andalusians,” Montero stated. Vox came in third place with 15 seats and holds the key for the PP to form a government. Its candidate, Manuel Gavira, asked Moreno Bonilla to “listen” to the Andalusians. The left beyond the PSOE had uneven results: Por Andalucía remains with 5 seats, and Adelante Andalucía is the party that has grown the most by obtaining 8 seats, six more than in the previous elections. The candidate of Adelante Andalucía, José Ignacio García, said after the results were made public: “Today the foundations have been laid to oust the right-wing parties from Andalusia tomorrow.”
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The secretary general of the PP of Andalusia: “It is too early to tell the PSOE to abstain”
Juan Manuel Moreno’s PP fell two deputies short of the absolute majority last night, a situation that, if it occurred, would lead, as the popular leader himself acknowledged last week, to appeal to the PSOE and Vox to abstain. However, the party’s secretary general and campaign coordinator, Antonio Repullo, admitted on Canal Sur Radio that “it is too early to tell the PSOE to abstain.”
The party will thoroughly analyze the results throughout the day and determine the strategy to follow. “We will see how the others respond,” said Repullo, who was very cautious about future negotiations with Vox. “We have achieved a social majority that has asked us to keep moving forward, but we will not be able to do it as we wanted,” he clarified. What seems clear is that they will not negotiate in a hurry.
The PP celebrates that it “breaks its electoral ceiling” in Andalusia and assures that Moreno is a “guarantee to keep moving forward”
The secretary general of PP-A and director of the May 17 electoral campaign, Antonio Repullo, highlighted that his party has managed to “break its electoral ceiling” in the regional elections with a “very comfortable victory at the polls” and assured that the acting president of the Junta and candidate for re-election, Juanma Moreno, is a “guarantee to keep moving forward” despite falling two seats short of the absolute majority.
“We had a great celebration in Seville and in the eight provinces of Andalusia, we slept little, but we are strong enough to keep going, and now we are going to the National Board to analyze some great results,” he said in an interview on Canal Sur Television before traveling to Madrid, in which he congratulated himself for “breaking our electoral ceiling again” by gaining “150,000 more votes” in the 2022 regional elections, “a historic result in the eight provinces.”
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In this regard, Repullo emphasized that it is a “very comfortable” victory for PP-A against the other political parties “that did not have the result they obviously expected, because it is clear that while PP-A breaks its ceiling, PSOE-A breaks its floor once again with María Jesús Montero and with a way of doing politics that is obviously not the one Andalusians like the most.” (Europa Press)
NETWORK OF NETWORKS
Those citizens who vote twice
The scene takes place at night. A citizen walks with his dog while consulting a Vox electoral leaflet. The pet stops and defecates on the sidewalk. The walker hurries to pick up the excrement using the Abascal party’s advertisement. “The only thing they are good for. I feel so relieved,” comments @th.hhhh on TikTok. The post has accumulated more than 206,000 likes, has been shared more than 38,000 times, and has generated thousands of comments, most of which approve the occurrence. In another TikTok video, @user6xheou6k24 throws Vox ballots into the trash while stringing together a series of insults to the leaders of that political force. This video has been shared more than 6,000 times.
You can read the full column here
COLUMN
Excuses for a defeat
No matter how much all elections are presented as unrepeatable events, there are habits that never change. Every time a party tries to escape its responsibility after a defeat, the excuses are usually exactly the same. One of the most common strategies is to confine the crisis to a campaign problem. Claiming that a project has not been communicated well or confessing that unforced errors have been made — an expression overused by all spin doctors — always allows criticism to be distracted. And, above all, it restricts the problem to an instrumental dimension — communication — and avoids emphasizing the substantive issue: the political project.
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‘Podcast’ | The PP in the hands of Vox in Andalusia
Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla had insisted a lot on “avoiding the hassle of governing with Vox,” but after losing five seats, he will not only have to negotiate but, as Javier Casqueiro states, will likely end up governing with that party: “He will not give them the abstention to govern alone, as he intended at some point — and has sent that message — Juan Manuel Moreno.” In fact, Vox supporters have clamored for the “national priority.” All parties have defined themselves as Andalusianists, but the one who ultimately won was Adelante Andalucía, which went from two seats to eight and got more votes than Vox in Seville and Cádiz. However, Por Andalucía, the coalition formed at the last minute by IU, Sumar, and Podemos, had to settle for the five seats it won in the last elections. The PSOE has obtained its worst historical result in the community. With María Jesús Montero at the helm, it lost two seats and remains with 28. According to Casqueiro, the debate running through some corridors is whether Pedro Sánchez will bring forward the general elections, something that does not seem likely.
ANDALUSIAN ELECTIONS
What happened in Andalusia? The elections in seven charts
The Popular Party has won in Andalusia with 41.6% of the votes but falls short of an absolute majority. To renew the presidency, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla will need the support of other forces in a hypothetical investiture. The PP hovered around 55 seats in the polls, the majority was almost a toss-up, and it fell on the side the popular party did not want. We analyze the electoral result with seven essential charts.
You can consult all the charts here
ANDALUSIAN ELECTIONS
The results of the elections in Andalusia, street by street
Check the data from this Sunday’s elections in each census section.
You can consult all the data here
Good morning. We start the live narration of the political news on this Monday, May 18. Today, political parties review the Andalusian elections, in which Juanma Moreno’s PP has won but fell two seats short of the absolute majority and will need Vox to govern. The PSOE has obtained its worst historical result, while Adelante Andalucía has achieved eight seats.
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