Alberto Núñez Feijóo (PP) will win this Sunday’s elections in votes and seats but the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, resists better than expected and governance remains up in the air, with more options for the PSOE leader, who has a broader range to agree on. Neither the bloc on the right (PP-Vox) nor the one on the left (PSOE, Sumar and their usual allies) reach an absolute majority.
With 97% of the vote counted, the PSOE achieves 122 deputies, two more than in the last elections, while the PP, which the polls placed on the brink of an absolute majority with Vox, remains at 136, a good result that represents an increase of 47 seats, but insufficient given the expectations of the popular and all the polls and private surveys.
With the data from the scrutiny, Feijóo does not reach an absolute majority with Vox (33 seats) and the block on the right, with UPN (1), would remain at 170 deputies, six of the 176 that mark the absolute majority.
The sum of PSOE and Sumar, which obtains 31 deputies, is still further from the absolute majority, 153 seats, and is not enough with its usual partners: ERC (7), EH Bildu (6) and PNV (5), BNG (1). All together it would remain at 172 deputies, four away from the absolute majority.
The seven deputies of JuntsxCatalunya are relevant at this juncture, who, despite losing a seat and some 140,000 votes, could win an absolute majority in favor of Sánchez, but the demands that those of Puigdemont have raised during the electoral campaign -a referendum agreed with the Government-, repeatedly rejected by the Government, make this possibility almost impossible.
Another possibility of a government would be for the PNV and the Canary Islands Coalition to give their support to Feijóo but they would demand, particularly the nationalists, that Vox not enter the Executive and agree to vote affirmatively for the investiture of the PP leader, an option that does not have many signs of prospering either.
The bittersweet victory of the PP is quantitatively poor (by less than 200,000 votes over the PSOE), although territorially it is incontestable since it prevails in all the autonomous communities except in Catalonia and Navarra, where the Socialists win, and in Extremadura, Cantabria and La Rioja, where there is a tie between the PSOE and the PP. In the Basque Country there was a three-way tie between the Socialists and the PNV and EH Bildu.
