Spain's general election took place yesterday. Turnout, at over 75%, was almost 10% higher than the last general election in 2016.
There are several takeaways, chief of which is that prime minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists have figured out a way to staunch the bleeding on the center-left. And they did it by advocating greater social spending. Sanchez called the April 28 election after his anti-austerity budget was blocked by conservatives.
Now the Socialists are by far the largest party in the Congress of Deputies. It's nearest rival, the People's Party, suffered a catastrophic set back yesterday, losing 69 seats. The People's Party is at risk of being replaced by the center-right Ciudadanos as the second-largest political party in Spain. Ciudadanos picked up 25 seats and came within 220,000 votes of the People's Party.
Another takeaway is that Vox, the far-right, ultra-nationalist, anti-immigrant party, enters Congress for the first time with a little over 10% of the vote. Vox will hold 24 seats, about the number of seats (29) that Podemos lost, but hardly the juggernaut that the media made it out to be. Podemos still has nearly double the number of seats (42) as the far-right Vox.
Raphael Minder's "Socialists Strengthen Hold in Spain Election" is a good write-up, but he makes no mention of why Sanchez won.
I think it's pretty obvious. The Socialists won in Spain because they called for more social spending. It's a winning formula. And it points the way to victory for non-centrist, non-neoliberal Democrats in the United States.
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