What has happened in the last few hours?
This is the highlight of election day at 2:00 p.m. this Sunday, July 23:
The holding advantage reached 40.48% as of 2:00 p.m. This represents an increase of 2.56 points compared to the last election in 2019, when 37.92% of eligible voters had voted at that time. That number doesn’t include mail-in voting, which hit a record 2.47 million voters this year, double the number seen in the 2019 election.
Sánchez: “I don’t want to say if I’m optimistic, but I’m in a good mood.” The President of the Government voted at nine in the morning in the College of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Madrid. Pedro Sánchez came with his wife Begoña Gómez. At the outset, he didn’t want to triumph or anticipate any result: “I don’t want to say that I’m in a good mood when I’m optimistic.” As usual, he appealed for “the greatest possible participation and mobilization” in order, in his words, “to achieve a strong government so that Spain can move forward in the next four years”.
Feijoó: “We are risking a country model and a solid and strong government.” The PP candidate hoped that Spain will “start a new era” tonight and called for a vote despite the difficulties. “I hope and wish that the Spaniards will decide freely, despite the weather conditions and all the adversities,” he emphasized. “Whatever happens, I will continue to work for my country, I believe in it, it is my obligation, my calling and my destiny.” I have done nothing but work in the public service,” he said.
Díaz: “For the people of my generation, these are certainly the most important electionsS We are at stake for the next decade.” Just before 11:40 am, Sumar’s director, Yolanda Díaz, arrived at the Higher Technical School of Mining and Energy Engineers in Madrid. He launched a “call to all citizens” “to young people, women, pensioners, workers” to go to the polls. “For many years you couldn’t vote in our country,” he said. “Today we are playing to get up tomorrow with more rights, more democracy and more freedom,” he added.
Abascal justifies a poor result for Vox by saying “anyone who gets it will be heroic”. Santiago Abascal has already justified his party’s withdrawal from today’s elections by saying that “any result that Vox achieves under these circumstances will be a heroic result”. Abascal did not want to risk how many seats his party would get and only emphasized that he hoped that “the polls would enable a massive mobilization to change course”.
The PP suspects a conspiracy to allegedly boycott Sánchez following a breakdown on the Valencia-Madrid trains. After questioning the postal voting system, the PP is again promoting the idea that a black hand was behind the breakdown in a tunnel that led to the suspension of trains between Valencia and Madrid this morning. “The government must guarantee that people can vote. I call for alternative measures to be taken in the event that trains between Valencia and Madrid cannot be restored. If the elections were already set not to take place, this was missing,” said PP Deputy Secretary Esteban González Pons on his social networks, linking the incident to the date of the elections, which had challenged the rights from the start.
The PSOE is suing the PP before the electoral board after discovering envelopes containing PP ballots in a school in Jaén. The PSOE of Jaén has lodged a complaint with the zone’s electoral board after various irregularities were discovered in the electoral college of Los Villares (Jaén) in the Senate ballot papers, a circumstance that led to voting being suspended after 9:30 a.m. and for around 20 minutes. As the PSOE reported in a statement, the complaint came after “previously printed Senate ballots in favor of the three PP candidates, as well as PP ballots for Congress, were discovered in envelopes, all lying in the polling booths of the aforementioned college.”