Alvise splits the right by 61 seats in Spain's European election

Useful voting fails: the right divides, and Sánchez breathes

Repeated endlessly in the debate: splitting the right is the cheapest way to govern from the left. No pact or censure motion is needed: PP, VOX, and a third candidacy simply share the same electorate and win fewer seats than their votes would suggest. This is what is being discussed regarding Alvise's move into European politics and his potential continuity in general elections. The scenario of a divided right leaves Pedro Sánchez exactly where he prefers.

Why useful voting doesn't work the same in European elections?

Because in European elections, voters cast ballots in a single nationwide constituency with 61 seats at stake, not across 52 provinces. Votes that fail to cross the threshold are not merely close to a seat: they are entirely lost, and lost simultaneously among right and left voters. Only votes for parties that fail to win representation are wasted, and this total does not change the tonalidad of the distribution by more than one seat up or down.

With this arithmetic, the call for useful voting lacks arguments. The complete calculation, seat by seat, yields a much more modest difference than the alarmism suggests, according to its defenders. The real antiestéticar lies in the next election, the general one, where the provincial system multiplies the damage of every lost fraction.

The July 2023 mirror: from over 50 MPs to losing over 20

The repeatedly cited precedent. VOX entered 2023 with over 50 parliamentarians and won small local governments in municipal elections. In the July general elections, it lost over 20 MPs. One circulating reading suggests the PP did not want to win alone and, choosing between governing solo or partnering with the 'good' part of the PSOE before VOX, ended up demobilizing its own conservative electorate. Tens of thousands of votes, amplified by the D'Hont Law, were enough for those seats to vanish.

From this comes the most repeated reproach: whoever fragments the right is not the party appearing on the right, but the one claiming to be an alternative yet voting as dictated by Brussels.

The MEP who doesn't plan to set foot in Brussels

Among the reproaches to the candidate is one that repeats: he has come to secure an institutional foothold, not to change anything. He is accused of saying he does not plan to settle in Brussels, and the trinc calculation is no coincidence—a MEP's salary, estimated at around 10,000 euros per month, four years in office, and hopefully a couple of seats among the roughly 700 in the European Parliament. Changing the EU with two MEPs, the argument goes, is naivety hard to sustain.

The other floating accusation, of a judicial nature, is that his real goal is parliamentary immunity. As one participant notes, this shield covers facts occurring after taking office, not those before, so it does not protect against anything prior to holding the seat.

Why does the PP vote like the PSOE in Europe?

Because it is the argument that does the most damage to useful voting. The circulating accusation claims that in the European Parliament, the PP supports what the PSOE supports in nearly 90% of votes, and that the party's real function is to normalize and consolidate policies approved by the left. The formulation is harsh, but the summary is simple: the PSOE invents, and the PP imposes.

If accepted, the conclusion is that it does not matter who wins. And there is where the conservative voter stops believing in the call for useful voting and starts looking at candidacies that, at least, shout to Brussels what his party does not.

What polls say and why no one trusts them

Cited polls place Alvise as the third or fourth force in Europe, with over 1,200,000 votes and up to five MEPs. Events, such as the one in Málaga, with thousands of people outside the main square, are used as proof that there is more than digital noise.

The counterargument is no less solid: much of the PP electorate does not know who he is, and the real transfer would come mainly from abstention and from VOX. The debate assumes it is likely he will win a seat in the European elections; the doubt is whether that capital holds when the ballot is cast in small constituencies and voting becomes a government decision.

If fragmentation persists, the right may again win more votes than seats, and this differential has a name and a beneficiary. No one has yet proven that three parties sum to more than two, especially in a country where the provincial distribution punishes noise. The question is whether the transfer currently measured in voting intention holds up in a real campaign.