Spain election: Useful vote, PP punishment, and immigration clash

Useful vote, PP punishment, and immigration clash

One day before voting, the economic conversation has split in two: those who believe that voting outside the right-wing bloc hands a seat to the Government, and those who argue that voting for the traditional right finances the same business association supporting the system. In between, a puzzling fact: abstention appears as the most profitable option for those who trust neither side. And a calculation circulating in digital forums: if the right-wing vote fragments among five or six parties, the result resembles the last general elections.

The trigger is not economic, although disguised as such. It is migration policy. Here cross the two axes ordering discontent: punishing the party that managed the pandemic with fines and lockdowns, and the suspicion that the institutional right has no real intention of changing the framework. Frijol, Perro, Pagascal: nicknames work as side markers, not as analysis. And underneath, the question no one answers with numbers: how much of that vote is punishment and how much is conviction?

Useful vote and the arithmetic of fragmentation

The most repeated argument is arithmetic. In small provinces, where the last seat is decided by thousands of ballots, voting for a minor party equals handing the seat to the opposing bloc. The conclusion is simple: one must concentrate the vote in the two parties with real governing chances. Those who do not do so, this current holds, are voting for the continuity of the current Executive by the back door.

The counterargument is no less harsh. It is claimed that the party presenting itself as an alternative has already governed with the same recipes it claims to combat: tax hikes, questioned health management, and no effective measures on border control. If that is the alternative, why change. Abstention, in this framework, ceases to be passivity and becomes a declaration: I fund neither.

There is a third vector, less confessional. Voting from abroad, with dual citizenship and without direct exposure to local consequences, functions as pure punishment voting. Without personal cost, without a neighborhood suffering the decisions. It is the most ideological and least consequentialist vote of all.

Migration as the real axis of discontent

The issue ordering the conversation is not the CPI or the Euribor. It is migration policy. One part of the electorate holds that only one party has proposed some type of control and that, although insufficient, it is the only thing available. Another part responds that this party has never governed and that its real program, when compared with international experiences, points to cuts in pensions, health, and the minimum interprofessional wage.

The discussion stalls there. There are no management data because there is no management. It is compared with other countries and it is concluded that the Spanish case is unique, for the worse, with a right that has systematically opposed raising the SMI, raising pensions, the social electricity bonus, lowering fuel prices, regulating rentals, subsidizing public transport, and raising taxes on large fortunes. This list, repeated insistently, functions as a closing argument: if that is the right, what is left for the left.

Punishment for pandemic management

There is a grievance crossing the entire spectrum that has not been digested. Fines for not getting vaccinated, lockdowns, crisis management. For one part of the electorate, that is the original sin disqualifying any party that endorsed it. It does not matter what they say now about immigration or the economy: whoever signed that does not deserve the vote.

This grievance explains why punishment voting is not directed only against the Government. It is also against the opposition that did not oppose enough. The practical consequence is a dispersion that, according to the most repeated calculation, guarantees the continuity of the current bloc. And that, for those who vote with a calculator in hand, is the worst possible scenario.

What is decided on Sunday

The result is not decided in Madrid or Barcelona, where the blocs are consolidated. It is decided in provinces like Zamora, where a handful of votes decides a seat and where the useful vote and the vote of conviction fight their particular battle. The paradox is that those who vote from conviction in a small province may be handing the seat to whom they detest most. Those who vote from calculation in a large city may be strengthening those who do not represent them.

With these threads, abstention should be massive. It will not be. And no one ends up figuring out why.