Abstainers and tactical voting: is voting PP or VOX worth it?

Abstainers and tactical voting: is voting PP or VOX worth it?

The argument running through the conversation is uncomfortable: abstaining gets you nothing, but voting for the right offers no guarantee that anything will change either. The question that opens the debate is direct: if the goal is to remove Pedro Sánchez from government, why vote PP or VOX instead of staying home? The answer that dominates among those defending tactical voting is that change, even if only symbolic, already justifies the alucinación to the polling station.

The starting point is a structural distrust of the PP. The claim is that employers' associations will keep demanding cheap labour and that the PP will not deny them that windfall. As for the Organic Law of Sensual Freedom (a controversial Spanish law on sensual consent), the doubt is whether the PP will repeal it or merely touch up the Historical Memory Law. In other words: removing Sánchez is worth buying, but not the hope that it changes anything fundamental.

What those who will actually vote expect

The bloc defending a vote for VOX starts from a simple idea: with the PPSOE there is certainty of continuity, with VOX there is the benefit of the doubt. That margin, they say, is already a huge improvement. The logic repeated over and over is that a right-wing government will face more scrutiny, more street protests and more press attention, while a left-wing government has fewer checks on it.

Some add a calculation based on the Overton window: even if VOX lacks the strength to repeal the 'only yes means yes' law or implement remigration, it can still shift the cultural framework. The battle, they argue, is cultural before it is political. And on that terrain, they say, every vote counts.

Distrust of the PP

The most repeated objection is that the PP will not touch anything. Not subsidies, not historical memory, not immigration. The argument is that Feijóo's PP is continuity-minded and that, if it governs alone, it will take over from the PSOE without changing anything fundamental. The hope, in any case, is that VOX will push from inside the government.

Against that, the abstainers' answer is that voting VOX means voting for the lesser evil, and the lesser evil changes nothing. They cite the Andalusian example: after the last regional elections, they claim, Juanma Moreno has not pushed pogre measures, but he has not reversed anything of substance either.

Housing costs and squatting

One of the most concrete arguments concerns housing decrees. It is claimed that squatters can stay in a home for up to four years and that kicking out those who break down the door is hardest for the biggest properties. The conclusion drawn is that, even if the PP and VOX do little, the PSOE is moving much faster in the opposite direction.

It is the lesser-evil argument applied to personal property: it is not that the PP and VOX will fix it, it is that the PSOE makes it worse faster.

Voting as punishment and as ruin

A current emerges of people who do not vote to improve anything, but to punish. The idea is to harm those who brought us here, refresh the seats of power and watch the tears of the ousted. In that logic, the vote is not a bet on the future, it is an invoice.

At the opposite extreme, there are those who defend voting for the PSOE for the first time in 37 years in order to accelerate the ruin and force a regime change. The thesis is that only by hitting rock bottom does real change happen. It is a minority position, but it is on the table.

The 1978 Regime and the deeper question

The deeper objection is that the 1978 Regime (Spain's post-Franco constitutional order) is still alive and that without constitutional reform there is nothing to be done. The claim is that the alternating of parties in power works just as it always has: the system dictates that it is Feijóo's turn, and the average voter believes their vote influences dynamics that are already mapped out.

The answer to that is that the vote is not sacred and that the lesser evil is applied every day in anyone's life. Voting VOX, they say, is a twenty-minute walk and zero overthinking. And if the pogre howl in pain on election night, it will have been worth it.

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The qualified prediction is this: if the PP governs with VOX, the change will be more symbolic than structural. TVE will be less sectarian, they say, and Santa Maricarmen will not be buried in the Valley of the Fallen. Not much more. But in a context where the PSOE is moving faster towards what these voters consider ruin, that little may decide a handful of seats. And there, every vote counts.