A Summary of the Spanish 2023 Elections

Jul 27, 2023

Here's a quick summary of the 2023 Spanish elections. This is correct as of 27 July 2023, when I'm writing this.

Before the elections, this was the situation:

Polls predicted (correctly) that the centre-right People's Party (PP) would win the most seats. But polls also predicted they wouldn't win enough to govern outright and would need support from the far-right Vox party to form a government.
Support for Vox has actually dropped off in the last few years so the concern of many wasn't so much that they would "win" but that they would play the role of kingmaker, enter government and thus push the PP further to the right on certain issues (immigration and LGBTQ rights, for example).

Here's what actually happened:

The PP didn't win as many votes as they expected, and the centre-left PSOE party (currently in government) did better than expected.
Far-right and far-left parties lost support as Spaniards drifted to the centre. In other words, Spaniards voted less for the smaller, outlying parties and voted more for the two more centrist parties (PP and PSOE). This suggests that many Spaniards want politics to return to the centre.
The right (PP + Vox) didn't get the votes they needed to form a coalition government. The left (PSOE + various left-wing parties) may be able to form a government, but it will be tight. Expect some weeks of horse-trading.
A very likely scenario is neither side can form a government, and we have elections again at the end of the year.
In the meantime, the current PM (Pedro Sánchez) remains the "caretaker" Prime Minister.

For those who have messaged me with concerns about the rise of the far right in Spanish politics, here are my thoughts:

Vox has lost support in the last few years. They got 15% of the vote in 2019 and just over 12% on Sunday.
But while the party had a bad election night, they remain the third political force in Spain.
Spaniards may have voted for Vox more in the past as they were seen as a protest vote. But the fact that these elections may have led to them actually getting into power perhaps led Spaniards to shy away from voting for them and cast a more centrist vote.
Many in the PP party weren't very excited about the potential of partnering with Vox. The PP actually tried to move further to the right a few years back (to neutralise Vox) but it wasn't a successful strategy.
Surveys show Spaniards' main concerns are the economy, unemployment, healthcare, and housing. It appears Vox's leverage of "culture war" topics (climate change, LGBTQ rights, attempts to play down gender violence) simply aren't topics that the majority of Spaniards want to debate.
However, the fact that a far-right party is Spain's third most-voted political party would have been unthinkable ten years ago (given this country's 20th-century dictatorship).

This week we released a video (recorded just before the election) discussing Vox's rise.

Click here to watch the video.