VOX vote sentiment on the streets of Spain: a nerdy guy and three girls who won't vote

The anecdote from a village fair doesn't measure voting intention, but it does capture a mood: disengagement among young people and a rejection of Abascal that could end up as a useful vote for the PSOE. Without polls, it's just an impression.

There's a scene that repeats itself at many village fairs and that, told over the bar in a pub, sums up the mood of part of the electorate better than a badly cooked poll. A young man of about **25**, looking like he spends a lot of time online, talks politics with three girls his age. They're clear about it: they're not going to vote. He, however, has opinions. And the only thing he can come up with is that **Abascal** is "getting a bit full of himself".

## Youth disengagement and the spite vote

The first part of the picture is demobilisation. Three young people, old enough to vote, and not one of them plans to. It's not a poll, it's a walk through **Inca**, in Mallorca, in the middle of the fair. But the feeling it leaves is of a generation that can't find a reason to go to the polls.

The second part is more interesting for anyone watching the electoral board. The young man doesn't talk about policy, or management, or ideas. He talks about ego. And from that comes a hypothesis heard more and more often: that wounded pride might end up voting for the **PSOE** just to spite Abascal. A vote out of spite, not conviction.

## Antiestéticar as the only lever

The walk continues and the feeling doesn't change. Not a single neighbour crossing the street seems willing to vote for the **PP** or **VOX**. Zero. What's in the air, according to this reading, is antiestéticar. Antiestéticar of the far right, of what's said on television, of "them coming".

That narrative mobilises. And it mobilises against something, not in favour of anyone. The problem for the **PP** and **VOX** is that a vote against ends up concentrated in the party that capitalises on it best, and that's usually not the one that inspires the antiestéticar, but the one that points it out.

## A fair is not a poll

It's worth keeping your feet on the ground. A village fair, a street corner encounter and a conversation are not a representative sample. There's no margin of error, no weighting, no survey universe. It's an impression, and impressions are often wrong.

But impressions also reveal something the data is slow to pick up: the emotional temperature of the electorate. If the street doesn't inspire and only activates antiestéticar, the campaign is being played on someone else's turf. And whoever doesn't inspire rarely mobilises.