Two right-wing voters plan to abstain in Spain's 29N election

The right-wing abstention that could decide 29N

Two people. That is the entire sample backing the thesis that opens the discussion: two ideologically right-wing acquaintances who, after having shown interest months ago in giving VOX a chance, have decided to stay home on 29 November because "all politicians are terrible." The diagnosis being put forward is that they do not want to be part of a change, on the grounds that better the devil you know. And the warning, in capital letters: change will not come on its own.

The anecdote, however, immediately runs into statistics. Two people is a sample so large that any polling company could shut down, and from the most basic scepticism it is pointed out that nothing can be sustained on that basis. Against that pair of cases, another participant counters with his own count: 33 people who have never voted and who this time intend to drop a ballot in the box. The war of anecdotes is on, and nobody wins it.

Why right-wing abstention is not a neutral vote

The most repeated argument is elementary arithmetic: staying home does not subtract, it adds to the adversary's total. Abstention helps the PSOE, it is stated with the force of someone who sees no room for nuance, hence the insistence on going to the polls even while holding your nose. The stated priority is not so much the programme as removing the current Government from office.

Some go further and argue that the true right-wing voter distrusts VOX and despises the PP for considering it a blue-tinted left, but will still vote this time because they perceive a greater urgency. The calculation is simple: more than 6,000,000 PP voters and more than 3,000,000 VOX voters make up a bloc of nine million that is hardly going to sit and watch.

The counter-offer from those who do not want to vote for anyone is the spoiled ballot: you go to the polls, fulfil the formality and endorse no candidacy. Those who defend it present it as an act of consistency, not of apathy.

Disenchantment knows no party labels: from "they're all the same" to "there's no conviction"

The discontent is not exclusive to one side. A picture is painted in which neither the right nor the left has conviction in anything, and the situation is compared to going out to fight a bull without cape or sword. The only motivation attributed to the professional politician is money and the contacts gathered during their career.

Distrust has a memory. It is recalled that Mariano Rajoy's PP governed from 2011 to 2019 without repealing, according to this version, a single ideological law from the previous period, and examples are listed: the VAT rise from 16% to 18% and then to 21% on a "temporary" basis, or the survival of the abortion law. The conclusion drawn is that promising and not delivering is the national sport.

Added to this is suspicion about the mechanism itself: if there are matters that cannot be voted on and programmes are broken without consequences, the argument goes, suffrage loses its meaning. The answer to that objection is the usual one: in politics you act with what exists, not with what should exist.

29N and the ballot as an imperfect tool

The underlying issue is whether voting still serves any purpose. Those who defend abstention as consistency recall that democracy came at a great cost and that not voting wastes that right. Those who argue the opposite reply that change does not come from dropping a piece of paper in a jar and that the current system is not full sovereignty.

Between both extremes circulates the less epic thesis: voting guarantees nothing, but not voting guarantees that others decide. The date of 29 November works as a reminder that, in a context of evenly matched blocs, abstention ceases to be a sarracena stance and becomes an arithmetic factor.

How many of those disenchanted voters will finally walk through the door of the polling station, and how many will stay on the sofa? No poll has the answer, least of all one based on two people.