The PP wins the elections in Castilla y León and Vox asks to enter a coalition government

The PP has won the elections in Castilla y León this Sunday but will have to have an unstoppable Vox to govern. Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE takes a hit by ceasing to be the leading political force in the region and losing seven seats. Ciudadanos only achieves one representative and Soria enters Parliament with three attorneys.

Some results that for the popular are a triumph if you take into account that two attorneys earn compared to 2019 and will be able to maintain, after 35 years, one of its main fiefdoms. But a ‘bitter victory’ if one takes into account that the expectations of the Castilian and Leonese president was to achieve a victory sufficient to govern alone.

At the national level, the results in Castilla y León have a double reading. The Pablo Casado formation does not manage to advance convincingly but they reflect a clear defeat for the Socialist Party of Pedro Sánchez, who sinks.

Vox will be the key to government for Fernández Mañueco, who ended the coalition he had with Ciudadanos. Santiago Abascal already announced after knowing the results that he will enter the regional government in exchange for investing Mañueco as president of the Board. “What face of a vice president is being put on Juan García Gallardo,” said the national leader of Vox.

The failure of Pedro Sánchez and his government coalition is not only reflected in the loss of 7 seats, but has also made the center-right represented by PP and VOX hegemonic.

Crisis in the PSOE

The poor results of the PSOE will also open a major crisis between the Castilian and Leonese socialists. Luis Tudanca not only has not been able to maintain the clear advantage that he had over the PP, but he has receded in a resounding way and is definitively moving away as a future option to end the hegemony of the Popular Party.

The socialist candidate has hinted at a possible departure of the party’s leadership. “Another will come who will make the change,” he said excitedly in the results assessment appearance.

A campaign in decline for the PP

The PP candidate, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, has not been able to overcome the ‘pájara’ he suffered in the middle of the campaign when the CIS polls began to talk about the possibility of an insufficient majority to form an alliance with VOX and they left the door open to a coalition government of the left with the local parties.

It was then that began to give more prominence in the campaign to the Madrid presidentIsabel Díaz Ayuso, despite the guidelines from Genoa, which had raised the elections as a kind of first round between Pablo Casado and Pedro Sánchez, for which the national president of the PP has had an important presence in the Community.

It also contributed to this that both PSOE and Ciudadanos have focused a good part of their campaign on accusing Mañueco of an electoral advance that was justified only in the interest of Pablo Casado to inflict a double defeat: on the one hand Pedro Sánchez and, on the other, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

solo elections

Another of the factors that played against Mañueco was that for the first time the elections did not coincide with the municipal ones, which would reduce the pull of participation that the mayors, mostly from the PP, have in the electorate of the towns.

In favor of this demobilization, the forecasts of rains and the fear that the Covid pandemic still generates among the older population in the territory also contributed.

less involvement

Participation has been one of the keys to these results. The turnout at the polls was 63.5%, two points less than the 65.79% registered in 2019. Rural areas have been more reluctant to votewhile it has remained in urban areas.

In any case, to facilitate participation, the Junta de Castilla y León set up buses so that people who did not have polling stations in their smaller local entities, as these are not municipal elections, can go to their municipality of reference to exercise their right to vote. For their part, people with a visual disability of 33% have been able to request a kit for the right to accessible voting, which applicants have also been able to receive at their homes.

Breakdown by provinces

It should be remembered that in these elections the 81 seats of the Cortes of Castilla y León are chosen, so the absolute majority is set at 41. Valladolid elects 15 attorneys, León 13, Burgos 11, Salamanca 10, Ávila, Palencia and Zamora 7, Segovia 6 and Soria 5.

The PP and the PSOE share four of the 9 provinces each, while Soria already won widely in the homonymous province. The popular ones win in Zamora, Segovia, Salamanca and Ávila while the socialists do it in Burgos, León, Palencia and Valladolid.

However, there are ties in the number of seats between the two most voted parties in León (PP and PSOE, 4), Palencia (PSOE and PP, 3), Valladolid (PSOE and PP, 5) and Zamora (PP and PSOE, 3).

Soria already stands out in the province, obtaining a similar number of votes to those of the PP and PSOE together, with more than 42% of the votes in the constituency.

few incidents

The day took place without any major incidents, with the vast majority of schools opening at 09:00 as planned. The most notable event was the disappearance of an electoral roll at a table in Salamanca and the opening of a police file on a member of the table in Ávila who refused to wear a mask and who had to be replaced.

In addition, the candidacy of Empty Spain denounced the lack of ballots in polling stations in Palencia, Salamanca and Burgos.

On the other hand, Vox and the PSOE have filed complaints before the regional Electoral Board against the Popular Party for some messages on social networks that they consider to be a “crystalline violation” of the law during voting day for incurring a “vote request through an electoral campaign with the hashtag #YoVotoPP”.