Pensioner vote sinks PP's poll numbers in Spain

The pensioner vote dismantles the polls' narrative

The polls published every day don't measure what they claim to measure. According to the argument that opens this discussion, when respondents are pressed to recall how they voted last time and why they'll do it again, the result changes radically: the PSOE would soar to 36.8% of the vote, the PP would fall to 13.4% and Vox to 5.7%. Pedro Sánchez would triple Feijóo's ballot count. The key, the argument goes, lies in a bloc of some 10 million pensioners who vote with a different logic than the one measured by stated-preference barometers.

The thesis is not that all retirees vote for the same party —there's everything among them, and several messages stress this—, but that this group's demographic weight and voting loyalty make it the real arbiter of any election. Measuring "who would you vote for tomorrow" is not the same as reconstructing past electoral behaviour, party loyalty and the real probability of turning out. Between one and the other lies an abyss.

Why the d'Hondt law punishes a divided right

The second axis of the analysis is mathematical, not ideological. Adding up the PP's and Vox's votes is not enough: the d'Hondt law allocates seats by calculating each party's quotients separately, province by province. In a five-seat constituency, with the PSOE at 38% and another left party at 12%, a PP at 35% with Vox at 15% gives the right three seats; by contrast, a PP at 25% with Vox at 25% —the same 50% of votes— yields only two. That lost seat goes to the PSOE without it winning a single extra vote.

Hence the tactic attributed to the governing party: fragmenting the right's vote so its two quotients don't add up. It is the most technical argument of the whole exchange and, curiously, the one that receives the least rebuttal.

Antiestéticar of touching pensions as an electoral weapon

The counteroffensive comes on the pensions front. Against those who claim the right will cut benefits, it is recalled that the reform raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 —the Ley 27/2011 (Law 27/2011)— was passed by a socialist government, and that the switch to calculating pensions over the last 29 years of contributions came from a coalition executive. The only government that froze pensions, it is added, was also socialist.

Playing with this issue is a double-edged weapon: whoever wields it first exposes themselves to the opponent waving the spectre of cuts. And with an electorate over 65 that distributes its vote mainly between the PP and the PSOE, the margin for error is minimal.

The underlying problem: who pays for the system

Beyond the electoral arithmetic, the exchange leaves an uncomfortable diagnosis. The baby boom generation is starting to retire and the birth rate has collapsed: half as many children are born as in the 1970s. It is argued that talking about reform and the system's sustainability is taboo unless the relevant minister says it, and that the result will be a country of the old, with a dwindling young population being replaced.

The most repeated response to that diagnosis is the usual one: let those who come after deal with it. The full calculation of what it costs to maintain the system with an inverted pyramid appears broken down in no message, but the conclusion drawn is that the problem is not one of ballots, but of arithmetic.

Demobilisation as a strategy

There is a less flattering reading of the phenomenon: planting the idea that the outcome is written in advance so that sympathetic voters don't bother to vote. First it seems impossible for the incumbents to repeat; then improbable; in the final stretch, possible. That way any result fits better.

With more than a month to go until the election, the polls will keep being published and contradicting each other. The only one that counts is called turnout, and no barometer measures that.