Outgoing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists are behind the Popular Party, but the right-wing party does not have an absolute majority. The left could therefore remain in power.
Because he lost the parliamentary elections in all polls, the socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez managed on Sunday to limit the gains of the right-wing opposition and, thanks to the alliance game, to keep a chance against all odds to stay in power in extreme cases. In front of his supporters, he claimed that the right and the extreme right had been “beaten”.
“The declining PP-Vox bloc is defeated,” he told enthusiastic socialist activists who had gathered outside the Socialist Party headquarters in central Madrid.
“A lot more of us want Spain to go further,” he added.
After counting more than 99% of the vote, the Popular Party (PP) of its conservative rival Alberto Núñez Feijóo won a total of 136 seats in the Chamber of Deputies out of a total of 350, and the far-right Vox party, its only potential ally, won 33 seats.
With that, the PP won 47 more seats than in the previous elections in 2019, but fell far short of the 150 seats Alberto Feijóo had aimed for. In particular, the PP and Vox, which have lost ground since the last election, only get 169 seats, while the absolute majority is 176.
Right-wing leader says he wants to try to ‘form a government’
Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Party is credited with just 122 MPs, and Sumar, his radical left ally, 31. But the socialist, who has been in power for five years, is paradoxically in a better position than his conservative rival and can hope to stay in power because of his chance to garner support from the Basque and Catalan parties, for which Vox is a scarecrow.
However, Alberto Feijóo achieved the victory. The PP had “won the elections,” he exclaimed from the balcony of party headquarters, reaffirming his intention to “form a government” and calling on the Socialists not to “block” such a government.