Leftist Voter Supports Vox in Spain

I am more left-wing than you, yet I vote for Vox

Expropriate vacant homes held by banks and funds, cap fuel and electricity prices, establish state-owned enterprises in key sectors, and donate 0.7% of GDP to poor countries. This is the platform listed by a voter who defines himself as "very left-wing," from the old left. He concludes with a phrase that breaks the script: he votes for Vox. It is not a dinner-table provocation. It is a structured thesis: if no party defends the working class anymore and everyone divides into identity groups, each person ends up voting for the one acknowledging theirs. His, he says, is that of a divorced man and father.

What exactly does this leftist voter demand?

The list is anything but mild. State ownership in fuels, electricity, and transport. Maximum prices set by the State for essential goods and services. Expropriation of empty homes owned by banks and funds to distribute them among low-income families or, failing that, tens of thousands of social housing units per year. And a figure he repeats like a banner: 25% of all money in Spain is in the hands of 1% of the population. From this, he argues, stems the need for redistribution.

He does not hold back on other issues either. He wants taxes to fund services — education, health, transport, justice — and not waste programs. He defends that everyone should do what they want with their body, provided they pay for it out of pocket. And he aspires for a family to live on a single salary. None of these banners sound like any current program. That is the leap.

From the working class to identity politics

The central diagnosis is cultural. Where once there was talk of the working class, now there is talk of identity groups: feminist, LGBT, migrant, and, with irony, business owners. In this fragmentation, the unlabelled voter is orphaned. Some go further and see design in the maneuver: dividing the population into supposedly incompatible groups would be the most effective way for no one to reach a majority.

Against this weighs another argument. It is maintained that the right also pursues social justice within its own framework, and assuming the opposite is a perception error. It is also recalled that this voter supported the 15M movement and Podemos when they seemed to trinc that line: disappointment, they say, is the real engine of the ballot change.

0.7% of GDP: aid no longer defended by anyone

Few proposals on the list generate as much rejection as donating 0.7% of GDP to poor countries. The dominant argument is that decades of empirical evidence do not support that such transfers lift anyone out of misery and may even disincentivize work at source. Another is added: extreme poverty is fought with capital, savings, and investment, not with aid.

The most developed version points out that a poor country advances by allying with rich economies that transfer production, provide knowledge, and sign trade agreements, and that this initial capitalization would allow financing infrastructure and education. The obstacle, they say, is not lack of funds but lack of legal certainty: if the money ends up in another palace, no project holds up.

Will Vox repeal gender laws?

There lies, according to this voter, the ultimate reason for his ballot: he expects the party to void "gender" laws, and it is the only thing that truly moves him. Not everyone sees it the same way. Against this expectation, other voices argue the contrary: that the path would not be repeal but expanding the framework to the whole family, under the argument that it is less discriminatory, when the request was to withdraw it. And it is recalled that the party backed the extension of the state of alarm and then denounced it, which feeds doubt about its willingness to execute what it promises.

State companies, price caps, and who manages the money

On the economy, two objections cross. The first: much of what is demanded already exists in practice, because the State places officials on the boards of strategic companies. The problem would not be lack of public control, but who exercises it. The second points to the data in the list itself: if 25% of money is in the 1%, it is responded, much of that concentration comes from discriminatory regulations and political networks, not just the market.

Do left and right labels still serve?

Some go further and maintain that left and right are labels designed to keep the population divided within a partyocracy. From there, the vote transfer would not be a betrayal, but the logical consequence. Others read it as pure cynicism: if all parties end up agreeing on the same things, voting becomes an exercise of particular interest, a save yourself if you can with a ballot.

With these elements, the question is not whether this voter is left-wing. It is what would happen if tomorrow a party appeared that signed half of his program. Would he really vote for it? Or is his vote no longer about programs?