PISA scores fall and young vote for VOX tops 50%, polls show

The young vote for VOX nears 50% as PISA scores plummet

A mediocre PISA report, a batch of polls and a conclusion already recited from memory: the less educated the voter, the more they vote for VOX. The thesis rests on two pieces. One, the collapse of basic reading and maths skills among Spanish students. The other, the surge of the right among under-30s. The first piece is in the data. The link between the two is not. Nobody has proven that a kid fails maths because they vote for a party, or the other way around.

What the polls really say about the young vote for VOX

The surveys paint a less clear-cut picture than the headline suggests. VOX slightly exceeds 50% of the vote among under-30s, but across the population as a whole it holds a percentage equivalent to the other age groups. In other words: academic background separates far less than is claimed. What does appear, however, is a repeated European pattern: parties like VOX that attract voters on low-to-middle incomes without higher education. That is textbook electoral sociology, not an intelligence test.

From there, the debate splits in two opposite directions. Some read the data as a Spanish anomaly. Others see it as a portrait of economic discontent that the left stopped representing. Neither reading explains why the phenomenon repeats across half of Europe.

Who sank Spanish education?

This is where the official narrative falls apart. The LOGSE (Spain's 1990 education law) was launched three decades ago, and since then every government has added to or dismantled reforms as it saw fit. The LOCE, passed in 2003, was meant to dismantle precisely that model, but it was never fully implemented because the 2004 change of government put it in a drawer. Then came the LOMCE, sabotaged by some regions and repealed by others.

The detail almost nobody mentions: education powers lie with Spain's autonomous regions. When you ask what the PP did with those reforms while in government, the answer is uncomfortable for both sides. It did not lift a finger to reverse them. It accelerated them.

Catalonia, the Basque Country and the immigration factor

Part of the analysis focuses on the regions with the most foreign-born pupils in school and claims the decline lies there. The regional results do not allow that equation to be closed: they mix socioeconomic level, language of instruction, student-teacher ratios and funding. Some go further and claim Catalonia was expelled from the PISA report over irregularities, a claim none of the bodies responsible for the study has confirmed. On identity, migration and schools, there is plenty of opinion and very little measurement.

The €309.8 million that left the Education Ministry

In parallel with the report, another figure circulated: a €309.8 million budget transfer approved in the Council of Ministers from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of the Presidency. The quick reading spoke of a €310 million cut earmarked for advisers. The most widely quoted summary argues this does not match what peine and describes a transfer between departments. The full breakdown, line by line, shows a difference that surprises anyone who checks it.

In the end, of everything discussed, what is jarring is not any figure. It is that much of the fury went into debating whether a message came in upper or lower case. The country's reading comprehension, meanwhile, is still waiting for its own report.