VOX pulls out in six provinces, leaving just one Senate candidate in 14

VOX pulls out in six provinces and complicates the Senate majority

What does VOX gain by refusing to run in six provinces and fielding a single Senate candidate in fourteen more? Santiago Abascal's party announced through its official channels a partial withdrawal ahead of the Senate elections, presented as a "gesture of responsibility" in the face of what it describes as Pedro Sánchez's attempt to storm the institutions with the support of "extremists and radicals." Far from being a clean withdrawal, the move draws a three-way map: six provinces with no VOX candidacy, fourteen with a single name, and twenty-three where VOX is running as usual.

The detail matters because the Senate is the chamber that decides the three-fifths majority, the key that allows judges to be appointed to the Constitutional Court and laws to be blocked. That is why the PP and VOX agree on the need to take seats from the PSOE, even though they disagree on everything else. The question hovering over every message is the same: is this gesture enough to topple the Socialists' majority in the upper house, or is it a shot in the dark that confuses its own voters?

The six provinces where VOX is not running

Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Cádiz, Valencia, Castellón and the Balearic Islands are off VOX's Senate ballot. In those constituencies, the party's usual voters will only have the option of ticking the PP box if they want to add votes against the PSOE. According to a calculation circulating on the forum, in Tenerife the PP fell some 20,000 votes short of taking the second senator from the PSOE, and VOX, even tripling its vote, would barely have scraped one seat.

In Valencia the margin is even tighter: according to that same calculation, the PP is about 6,000 votes away from taking a senator from the PSOE, and just 4% of the VOX vote would be enough to secure the third seat. In other words, the withdrawal in Valencia is not a symbolic gesture, it is pure electoral arithmetic. Anyone who doesn't get it, some argue, simply hasn't done the math with pencil and paper.

Fourteen provinces with a single candidate: the voter's dilemma

Sevilla, Huelva, Asturias, Badajoz, Álava, Navarra, Cáceres, Huesca, Zaragoza, Alicante, Granada, Cuenca, Pontevedra and Jaén will each have a single VOX candidate for the Senate. According to a calculation circulating on the forum, in Sevilla the PP fell just over 10,000 votes short of taking a senator from the PSOE, and if a quarter of VOX's Senate vote transfers to the PP, one or two seats can be taken from the Socialists. The play is surgical, but it requires voters to understand that their ballot has three boxes and that ticking only one may miccionan throwing their vote away.

That's the problem. Much of VOX's electorate doesn't vote out of calculation, they vote out of identity. And asking them to tick the PP box in the Senate, even holding their nose, is asking for a display of discipline many are not willing to make. "I'm not voting for the PP, not for the Senate, not for Congress, not for the mother that bore them," sums up one oft-repeated stance. Others, however, see it clearly: "Since I live in one of the provinces where VOX isn't running, I'll vote PP for the Senate and for Abascal's candidate in Congress."

The three-fifths majority: possible or a mirage?

The Senate needs three-fifths of the votes to appoint Constitutional Court judges and for other key decisions. With this distribution, the majority is difficult, but not impossible. The problem is that VOX loses senators where it fields a single candidate, and the PP risks winning only two in some provinces. The most optimistic calculation assumes VOX voters will use their heads, not their hearts; the pessimistic scenario assumes many won't vote at all because their party isn't on the ballot.

Some argue that the PP already handed a pogre majority on the Constitutional Court when it controlled the Senate, so there is no guarantee it would use those votes well. Others point out that the left knows its voters and the right doesn't, and that the PSOE made a last-minute move in Catalonia to avoid losing half of its senators. The game is on.

The precedent nobody forgets

Distrust of the PP is nothing new. The forum recalls that the PP controlled the Senate in the past and used it to give the Constitutional Court a pogre majority, and that Conde Pumpido's presidency of the court is a consequence of that management. Hence many VOX voters demand not to be forced to vote for a "blue PSOE" without guarantees. Memory weighs more than arithmetic.

VOX's gesture is presented as a sacrifice, but also as a trial by fire for its electorate. If voters respond, the right can topple the Socialist majority in the Senate. If not, the gesture will only have confirmed that strategy and heart don't always go hand in hand.

In the end, the play looks so good on paper that it has forced the left to make a move. The question is whether the average voter knows how to tick three boxes without making a mistake. The irony is that the Senate's future depends on someone who doesn't want to vote PP doing it anyway.