The Galician elections leave one of those paradoxes that always encourage demoscopic creativity. And although it may be surprising, if in the general elections last July Galicia had voted as in the regional elections of 18-F, Sánchez would continue to be president of the Government. In that assumption, the PP would have obtained 13 seats (the same as on 23-J), and the left –although with a different distribution–, ten (also the same as seven months ago). That is, the so-called “investiture block” would maintain the same correlation in Congress. Of course, while the BNG would gather seven more seats (eight in total), the PSOE would gather five fewer (116) and Sumar, two (29).
This unusual expectation is consistent with a local reading of the Galician result. What PSdG and Sumar have lost in vote share between 2020 and 2024 (seven points), the BNG has easily gained (almost 8 points). And in absolute votes, while the left as a whole added 617,000 ballots in 2020, it has now gathered more than 700,000 (almost 100,000 more due to participation).
In short, globally the left has kept its results on the rise in the Galician elections, so it could perfectly replicate its vote on 23-J in general elections. And if we take into account that, in the legislative elections, the Bloc usually gives in to the benefit of the PSOE and adds more than 50% of its regional vote, the socialists and Yolanda Díaz’s group could theoretically keep their support intact in elections of state level. Another thing is the lethal territorial devastation exhibited by both forces.
For this reason, and with a view to the European elections, it is legitimate to wonder how the equivalent of the more than 300,000 votes of 23-J that the state left (PSOE and Sumar) transferred to the BNG on 18-J would have behaved now in the rest of Spain. F, along with the 113,000 who stayed at home. Perhaps the polls offer some clue, but the truth is that the “national reading” (or extrapolation) of the Galician results to the whole of Spain is an almost impossible task. Among other things, because the established pattern (that the PP always obtains worse percentages in the State as a whole than in Galicia, and that the PSOE always obtains better percentages) is subject to abysmal oscillations (see attached graph). In fact, the PP has combined great results in Galicia with disastrous ones in Spain, and the opposite has happened to the PSOE.
Even so, one way to intuit what Galicia suggested on 18-F about the solidity of each party in Spain as a whole would be to apply the inverse comparison in search of significant asymmetries; that is, contrasting the evolution of the vote between the Galician elections of 2020 and the general elections of 2023, and between these and the Galician elections of 2024. For example, the popular ones have added more than 14 points between their state result of 23-J (33, 1%) and their vote on 18-F (47.4%). With this they have recovered all the suffrage that they gave up between the Galician elections of 2020 and the general elections of 2023. And that symmetry is a sign of stability. In turn, Vox – which on 23-J achieved 10 more points than in the Galician elections of 2020 – would have given up the same rate on 18-F.
On the other hand, there are no symmetries in the left’s vote. Sumar lost on 18-F more than 10 points in Galicia in relation to his state result in the July general elections, although then he had improved his 2020 Galician vote by eight points. And that asymmetry suggests that Yolanda Díaz’s party is It would possibly move downwards today in the general or European elections. For its part, the state PSOE improved its 2020 Galician result by more than 12 points on 23-J. Now, however, its vote in the Galician elections is almost 18 points less than in the last Spanish general elections. A clear asymmetry. And although a part of these losses can be reversed, the regional decline (from 19% in 2020 to 14% in 2024) reflects a socialist decline that could well be extrapolated to Spain as a whole.
From there, a mechanical transfer would lead to attributing a decrease of up to five points to the state PSOE (to 26%) and of at least two to Sumar (to 10%). On the other hand, the Galician result of PP and Vox would point to a Spanish reissue of their 23-J vote (around 33% and 12%, respectively). And this correlation would mean a popular advantage of up to four seats over the PSOE in the European elections and an absolute majority for PP and Vox in the general elections. But this game of mirrors ignores the decisive specificities of the Galician scenario with respect to the rest of Spain.
