The Popular Party sweeps Madrid. The triumph is indisputable for the popular in the Community and the City Council of the capital where both Isabel Díaz Ayuso and José Luis Martínez-Almeida have achieved the long-awaited absolute majority for the PP this 28M with 69 seats and 29 councilors, respectively. The ‘popular’ recover the absolute majorities that Esperanza Aguirre and Alberto Ruiz Gallardón had garnered in the past.
Díaz Ayuso improves his result from two years ago with five more seats (70) and 46.88% of the votes and will be able to govern alone – the absolute majority stands at 68 seats. More Madrid once again leads the opposition in the region, being the second force with the most votes. Mónica García’s candidacy adds four more seats than in 2021 up to 28. Juan Lobato’s PSOE, which had been ahead of Más Madrid for almost all of the scrutiny, falls behind again although it improves the result of two years ago with three deputies further. Vox falls with the growth of the PP, but manages to save the furniture and remains at 10 deputies compared to the 12 it achieved in 2021.
The worst news has been for the candidacy of Podemos-IU-Alianza Verde. The coalition headed by Alejandra Jacinto disappears from the Madrid Assembly after failing to achieve the threshold of 5% in votes necessary to obtain representation. The coalition has been left at the gates with 4.88% of the votes, losing the 10 seats that Pablo Iglesias’ list achieved in 2021.
Ayuso thus achieves the long-awaited absolute majority that will allow him to govern alone after two years in government thanks to the support of Vox votes. The leader of the PP in Madrid achieved her best result in her third appointment with the polls after a campaign with a national profile and marked by polarization with ETA as the main claim. The regional president came to request the banning of EH Bildu against the criteria of her party.
Almeida, absolute majority; We can, again outside
At the municipal level, the left has not managed to turn around in the Madrid City Council that it so longed for. The mayor and PP candidate, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, will command Cibeles again, but this time with an absolute majority, making the disappearance of Ciudadanos profitable, which has lost the eleven councilors it achieved in 2019. The PP candidate has gone from 15 councilors to 29 seats. Podemos has experienced a night of heart attack, staying within Cibeles until the stroke of eleven at night, at which time it has fallen below 5%, the minimum percentage necessary to have representation.
Almeida thus manages to benefit from the ‘Ayuso effect’ and will be able to govern alone, without the extreme right of Vox, whose candidate, Javier Ortega Smith, adds one more councilor to his four mayors. In this way, his wish is fulfilled, which he has been repeating tirelessly throughout the campaign, asking for “a large majority” so as not to have to depend on Vox, with whose candidate and ally he ended up breaking at the end of this legislature and the relationship was almost non-existent. .
More Madrid with Rita Maestre loses seven councilors and goes from the 19 councilors that Manuela Carmena achieved in 2019 to 12, and from being the party with the most votes to occupy second place with 19% of the votes, which will keep Maestre again as leader of the opposition. The former minister and candidate of the PSOE, Reyes Maroto, manages to improve the results of the socialists, going from 8 councilors to 11, three more than in 2019 when the candidacy was led by Pepu Hernández who ended up leaving the City Council.
The candidate for mayor of Madrid for Más Madrid, Rita Maestre, who has thrown in the rest in this campaign, arrived at the venue in the La Latina neighborhood where the party has followed election night at around eight o’clock at night. At that time, the candidate for the Community of Madrid, Mónica García, also appeared there. The two disappeared in the VIP area set up for party leaders from where shouts of joy could be heard from time to time. However, no one came out to make assessments or statements and silence took over the formation throughout the scrutiny.
Ciudadanos disappears from the Madrid City Council. Begoña Villacís fails to maintain representation in the capital after the formation was left out of the regional Assembly in 2021. The still deputy mayor of Madrid only retains 38,000 votes, 2%, far from the 5% necessary to follow Cibeles. Almeida is the one who makes those votes profitable. “It has been an unmitigated defeat and I don’t like to sweeten reality,” Villacís said after the results were known.
The red belt of Madrid is diluted: the left loses Móstoles, Leganés and Alcorcón
In the last year, Ayuso had focused a good part of her speech on keeping up with the southern municipalities, traditional strongholds of the left, which had supported her mostly in the 2021 regional elections. In fact, the PP leader celebrated in Fuenlabrada the anniversary of that victory, in a sort of campaign launch one year after these elections. In that municipality, the PSOE has maintained an absolute majority this Sunday, while the growth of the ‘popular’, which goes from three to seven councilors, occurs at the expense of Ciudadanos, who does not get representation.
Beyond Fuenlabrada, the result in what is known as the southern belt has been uneven in these municipalities. The PSOE is the party with the most votes in Getafe and Parla, while the PP has done the same in others such as Móstoles, Leganés, Alcorcón and Rivas-Vaciamadrid. But arithmetic is something else: the left adds up in Getafe, Parla and Rivas, where the party with the most votes on the left is the confluence between IU, Más Madrid and Equo, from which Podemos distanced itself, which has been left out.
In Leganés, the PP could govern if it gets the support of Vox and Unión por Leganés. In Móstoles it doubles its councillors, from six to 12. The PSOE, which had Mayor Noelia Posse as its candidate, awaiting trial for the ‘ITV case’, loses the consistory because the left does not add up. And in Alcorcón, the ‘popular’ Antonio González Terol, one of the last faithful to Pablo Casado and recovered by Ayuso for this square, has managed to double his result: from 6, to 12. Again, a good part of this increase has its counterweight in the fall of Ciudadanos, which is left without representation.
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