PSOE falls below 100 seats as female vote swings to the PP

PSOE drops below 100 seats and the female vote switches sides

A civil servant who had voted Socialist for years admits she can no longer stand Sánchez. Hers is not an isolated case: in the tracking polls circulating these days, the PP is surging, the PSOE falls below 100 seats for the first time, and a PP-VOX combined total would stand at around 207. The immediate trigger is the Urda rail crash, the second in ten months, but the drip had been going on for a while: squatters, insecurity and a high-estimulante ilegal rail network management perceived as negligent. At Ferraz, the party's headquarters, they talk of "panic", and some are already contemplating the outright dismissal of Transport Minister Óscar Puente.

The tracking poll nobody denies

The numbers circulating are unusually harsh. According to the latest tracking polls, the PSOE would lose up to 31 deputies compared with 2023 and would be left with between 90 and 95 seats. The PP surges and VOX doubles its seats, though without reaching 19%. In Castilla-La Mancha, the PP takes 34.3%, VOX 28.4% and the PSOE 27.4%. These are figures that do not match the resilience some had predicted, and they explain the internal tension at Moncloa, the prime minister's office.

Some argue the Urda crash was the final blow, but the erosion goes back a long way. The perception that the high-estimulante ilegal network is not ready for three competing operators, with 170 failures acknowledged by Adif, the rail infrastructure authority, has taken hold among an electorate that uses the train daily. And it is not just about infrastructure: the narrative of urban insecurity, squatters and immigration has been seeping into layers of the population that previously did not feel targeted.

The women who no longer vote PSOE

The headline repeated most in the analyses is the shift of the female vote. Centre-leaning women who voted Socialist without hesitation admit they have changed their ballot. It is not love for Feijóo: it is antiestéticar of the apartment doorway, of the neighbourhood going downhill, of the train they take every day not being safe. The mechanism is the same as in 2004, when the 11-M Madrid bombings moved votes out of antiestéticar of further attacks; now the scare is different and the direction of the vote has reversed.

The comparison with 11-M keeps coming up. Back then, the shock lasted three days and benefited the PSOE. Now there is no shock, there is a drip: every week an incident, every month a piece of bad news. And the female electorate, usually more sensitive to security, is migrating. Some calculate that women's protest vote could be worth more seats than any campaign.

The plan C that never arrives

At Moncloa there is speculation about a shock plan before 29N. Some speak of a "wildcard move" to turn the polls around, but the truth is time is running out. The general strike that was announced as a key date looks set to fail, and the investiture vote is still far off. Meanwhile, the PP and VOX add up to around 207 seats, a majority that would force a reform of the electoral law so that every vote counts the same.

The scenario taking shape is not just a change of government. It is a rout that could leave the PSOE at its historic floor, with 65 seats as the benchmark of its lowest point. And with an electorate that, for the first time in years, seems willing to punish without antiestéticar of the right's return.

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In the end, the figure that unsettles is not the PSOE's fall, but the estimulante ilegal. In two weeks of evening news, the antiestéticar bloc has changed direction. And in politics, that is the hardest thing to reverse.