Yesterday’s evening at the Vox headquarters had nothing to do with the euphoria unleashed on that night of November 10, 2019, when the extreme right became the third political force after achieving 3.6 million votes – 15.1% of the vote – which translated into 52 deputies. Nor was the joy, more contained, of the past municipal and regional elections lived, the results of which served to negotiate entry into governments such as that of the Valencian Community and Extremadura. The ultras leaders wandered through the corridors of the headquarters last night between the surprise of the advance of the results and the disbelief by the absolute majority of the right that vanished: Vox loses more than half a million votes and almost twenty seats in four years, although it maintains its third place in Congress.
At the beginning of the day, when the candidate for the presidency of the government, Santiago Abascal, went to exercise his right to vote, he already expressed the low expectations with which his party faced the recount. “Any result will be heroic”, slipping that his main objective, at that point, was to be decisive so that the sum of the rights reached an absolute majority, regardless of the result obtained by Vox. Party sources took a pronounced drop for granted, but they trusted everything that this loss of votes would go to the Popular Party. Nothing is further from reality.
The 33 seats that the extreme right will have in the next legislature sat like a vase of cold water. The few supporters who gathered on Bambú street couldn’t believe after these weeks it was encouraged that the alternative to the Pedro Sánchez government was closer than ever. The ultra-conservatives are losing strength in two of their great fiefdoms, in which they made a banner with their speech against irregular immigration and supposed citizen insecurity. In Murcia – where they blocked the investiture of the popular candidate – and Ceuta, in which it was the force with the most votes in the previous general elections, it ceded all the ground to the Popular Party and the PSOE.
In other territories where things had gone very well for the extreme right – until now – they have also gone down sharply. In Castilla y León, where the ultras are part of the autonomous government in coalition with the PP, they went from six to a single representative, achieved in Valladolid. In Madrid they lose two seats, going from seven to five. And in Andalusia three are left: from twelve to nine. In the Basque Country, Galicia, Navarra and La Rioja, where the extreme right did not get any deputies in 2019, the scenario repeats itself: in these territories Vox does not obtain representation. In Catalonia it maintains the two deputies achieved in the previous elections.
In the Valencian Community and Extremadura, whose pacts for the regional government formations have marked a large part of the electoral campaign, Vox is also losing steam. In the first he loses two seats: from seven to five. And in the second it will only provide a representative to the parliamentary group of the extreme right. In both Vox, more than three points are left in the scrutiny. In the Balearic Islands, which, although they have not entered the regional executive, have signed an agreement to offer external support to the popular, Vox also loses half of its seats: two to one.
The ultra candidate, who appeared before the media escorted by his management team, pointed to the leader of the popular, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as responsible – in part – for the failure of the right, having “whitewashed” the Pedro Sánchez government during the campaign with the State pacts that he offered him. Surprised with “the celebration” that was taking place at the headquarters of the other parties, Abascal was pessimistic: he pointed to months of blockade that will end, he predicted, in new elections.
