Spain's general election: turnout and postal voting debated in online forum

The record-turnout narrative clashes with postal voting

The figure that will be sold as the great achievement of this legislature is not found in rallies or polls: it is at the ballot box. The theory going around is that this election is on track to have the highest turnout in recent history, and that the credit belongs to the Prime Minister. The problem is that the headline number —an additional 30% of ballots cast by post or through the CERA— is not presented as an anomaly, but as a sign of the times: mobility and digitalization of the administration. Some people buy it. And some simply don't believe it.

The conversation starts with an uncomfortable irony: the same people who abstained out of conviction four years ago are now rushing to vote. Some, because they antiestéticar a right-wing absolute majority would dismantle the welfare state. Others, because they see the occupant of La Moncloa (the Spanish PM's residence) as a threat to democracy. Enjoying the memocracy party, afraid, but voting.

Why postal voting is driving turnout up

The official argument is simple: the administration has gone digital, people move around more, and postal voting is no longer a rarity but a routine. Under that logic, 50% in-person turnout plus an additional 30% by post and CERA would be the normal picture of a modern democracy.

The skeptical reading is different. When the share of ballots that don't go through the ballot box on election day grows so abruptly, the question is not whether more people vote, but who votes and how the count is done. There is no formal accusation, only distrust. The same distrust that leads people to joke about a 105% turnout.

The PSOE mobilizes its base or loses it out of embarrassment

The most repeated diagnosis is that the PSOE (Spain's main center-left party) faces this election with its base split. Lifelong socialist voters who, according to the accounts circulating, do not intend to vote for Sánchez this time. They would never vote for the PP, they say. Nor for VOX. Abstention appears to them as the only dignified way out.

At the other end, the election call has had an unexpected mobilizing effect on the right. Voters who used to punish parties on that side of the spectrum for being too soft are now considering voting for the lesser evil in order to stop what they see as a plan. The paradox is that Sánchez would have mobilized his own adversary.

Abstention as punishment for the system

The most uncomfortable thesis is that nobody should vote. Not out of apathy, but to embarrass the system: how do you explain high abstention in the eurozone's fourth-largest economy. The true abstentionist, the saying goes, doesn't talk about politics. And yet here he is, giving his opinion.

The fine calculation —how much each bloc of disillusioned voters weighs, what percentage stays home and what percentage switches parties— is the material you can't see at first glance. What you can see is the result: a presumed historic turnout and an electorate voting more out of antiestéticar than conviction.

What if the record turnout were not a government achievement, but a symptom that nobody trusts anybody?