Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla has achieved a historic victory in Andalusia, an absolute majority, the first for the PP, which allows him to get rid of Ciudadanos and Vox and govern alone. The magnitude of his triumph is accompanied by the defeats of the rest of the formations, which have nothing to celebrate in the hangover of 19J. Not even Vox, which has lost in these elections even having obtained more votes than four years ago.
The regional elections in Andalusia, scheduled for December but brought forward by Moreno Bonilla due to his parliamentary weakness, leave a series of keys that explain the victory of the PP. From the decline of the PSOE, in gradual decline for 18 years, to the prick of Vox even in territories such as El Ejido, where he cemented his electoral success in 2018.
1. The PP, from the worst to the best
The PP candidate has managed to take his party from the worst historical result to the best. Four years of total turnaround in the elections conceived from the Junta de Andalucía, which arrived with only 26 deputies, a government pact with Ciudadanos and with the support of Vox from the Andalusian parliament.
Source: Junta de Andalucía
Those 26 deputies have now gone to 58. A rise of 32 deputies that is based on a victory in the eight Andalusian provinces for the first time in its history. In 2018, Moreno Bonilla only achieved victory in Almería, with just 3,000 votes away from the PSOE. Now there are 60,000 ballots difference. In the rest of the provinces he has managed to turn the results around.
This is how the vote for each party goes up or down compared to 2018 in the 19J elections
Comparison of the vote for each party between the regional elections of 2018 and 2022 in each province of Andalusia. Click to see more detail
PSOE
PP
cs
vox
By A.
Adele. A.
Source: Junta de Andalucía
The objective of Moreno Bonilla was the same with which Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Alfonso Fernández Mañueco raised their electoral advances: eat Citizens and fight for a government alone. The Madrid president annihilated her partner but has to agree with Vox in the Assembly; that of Castilla y León failed and has had to integrate them into its Government and Ciudadanos maintains a minimal representation.
2. Not just Citizen votes
Moreno Bonilla, for his part, has managed to zero out his former partners. Juan Marín’s candidacy has gone from 661,371 votes in 2018 to 120,870 in 2022. A drop of 540,501 ballots that leaves them without representation in the Andalusian parliament.
How has the vote changed within the right?
Distribution of votes among the three right-wing parties,
PP,
VOX Y
citizens, in the 2018 and 2022 elections. Each circle represents a municipality in Andalusia. The size adjusts to your electoral census and the color, to the winner of the block on the right
2018
2022
But the triumph of Moreno Bonilla, superior to that of the other two territorial leaders of the PP who have submitted to the polls, is not explained only by that absorption. The popular ones have raised 831,634 votes, many more than those lost by Ciudadanos. Post-election analyzes will determine precisely where these ballots come from, but it is clear that many come from former PSOE voters (which dropped 127,182 votes).
3. The rich went more to vote
Turnout in these elections has risen very slightly, less than two points. But the determining factor in the elections has been which social groups have turned out the most and which the least. Citizens with the lowest incomes chose to stay at home: abstention in the census tracts with the best income rose by up to two points.
In contrast, the richest areas of Andalusia went to the polls more than in 2019. Abstention fell in all of them, especially in those with the highest income. In the richest 3%, abstention fell 3.1 points.
4. The historical defeat of the PSOE
That drop in votes for the PSOE leads them to their worst historical result. A few months ago, Juan Espadas took on the task of succeeding Susana Díaz after defeating her in the primaries, and the result could not have been worse.
As an example, Seville, the city of which Espadas was mayor before jumping into the regional battle: the Socialists have gone from winning in 2018 to being the second force with a 17-point advantage for the PP. In Dos Hermanas, where the PSOE had only lost in the first elections of democracy, the PP prevailed with a rise of 26 points.
There are other territories where its fall is significant. The PSOE won in Jaén in 2018 with 35% of the votes; it has lost 8 points while the PP has won 19. In Huelva, the socialist victory four years ago gave them 31.6% of the vote; now only 4 points fall, but the PSOE shoots up with more than 20.
The historical evolution of the PSOE indicates that gradual decline, election after election, since the victory of 2004, the last one in which one of every two votes cast in the Andalusian ballot boxes went to the PSOE. It is the first time that the Socialists have lost the million votes; also the first to get less than one in four votes.
5. Vox plays for the first time
Another of the keys to election night was the results of Vox, an improvement in votes that was bitter for the leaders of the extreme right. The party opted for Macarena Olona, one of its most popular figures and who comes to outshine Santiago Abascal himself, as its candidate in a land that is not his, where he had to register in a hurry, and whose objective was to be decisive for the formation of the new government.
With that bar, the failure is evident. The absolute majority of the PP leaves Vox in absolute irrelevance, with 14 deputies in the Andalusian parliament who will not be able to condition a single policy of the new government. They will have to fit into a right-wing opposition for four years; it remains to be seen what Macarena Olona does, who decided to keep her act as deputy in Congress. This Monday they have asked her if she will return to fight in the generals: “I am a soldier but above all I am a daughter of God, I cannot assure you what God’s designs are.”
Andalusia was the territory in which Vox broke into politics in 2018 and it is the first in which it plays. After rising in votes in the two general elections of 2019 –where from one to the other it shot up seven points in just a few months–, it has now fallen. From 20.4% in November 2019 to 16.3% this Sunday.
Regarding the regional elections, Vox has risen, but far from what the polls predicted and the party’s expectations, which expected a ‘macarenazo’, as they themselves coined. There are in fact worrying data for the party if you go down to detail: Vox won the elections in El Ejido in 2018 with 29.5% of the vote, and now it falls almost two points and is devastated by the PP, which shoots up to 47.6%.
6. Citizens walk towards extinction
Inés Arrimadas no longer has a party in Andalusia. She citizens she has disappeared after occupying five ministries, among which was the vice-presidency of the Board. From 21 seats to zero; from 661,371 votes to 120,870. Juan Marín leaves politics after his voters have decided to go to the PP.
The drop is especially pronounced in some of their 2018 feuds. In Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), the town of Juan Marín, the party won four years ago with 25.4% of the vote; now they are only 8.6%. Ciudadanos also won in Jerez de la Frontera in 2018; the disaster there is almost 20 points.
The vote for each party in the 19J elections
Percentage of vote and variation of vote for each party in each municipality over 2018. The size of the square indicates the number of inhabitants
These are the fourth regional elections in which Ciudadanos back down. In two of them, Madrid and Andalusia, it has completely disappeared. In the other two, Catalonia and Castilla y León, it has been reduced to a minimum. Of the 96 deputies he had in the four territories, only seven remain.
Inés Arrimadas directs a party whose only assets are a dozen deputies in Congress, with some polls predicting that it could lose them all in the next general elections.
7. A divided and penalized left
The night also left an important defeat in the two candidacies to the left of the PSOE. The parties that four years ago had made up a single list, Adelante Andalucía, have now been divided into two. The one from Por Andalucía, which integrates United We Can, IU and More Country among others, experienced complicated negotiations to organize its list.
The result of this 19J shows that the drop in votes for these candidates, together with the division, has accentuated the bad result. That political space loses many more deputies than votes. If in 2018 they received 585,949 votes, 16.19%, the sum of both lists has now remained at 451,658 votes, 12.26%. But the disaster comes from the part of the seats: from 17 to 7.
In provinces such as Almería, where Adelante Andalucía won a seat in 2018 with 9.7% of the vote, now neither of the two forces that made up the space —Por Andalucía and Adelante Andalucía— manage to win any deputy with 5 % and 1.7% of the votes, respectively. The same thing happens in Huelva, where both formations leave empty with 6.5% and 4% of the votes and lose the deputy who four years ago did obtain Adelante Andalucía.
The division of the vote of the left and the effect on the seats
Comparison of the percentage of votes obtained by the three main forces of the left in 2018 and 2022. Click to see more details
PSOE
By A.
Adele. A.
no seat
Source: Junta de Andalucía
If Por Andalucía and Adelante Andalucía had participated in the elections in a joint candidacy, they would have reached 12 deputies —assuming they had obtained the same number of votes—, five more than the seven of this 19J. For the rest, the Parliament that draws this simulation is similar: the PP would have also obtained the absolute majority although without margin (55 seats), Vox would remain at 14 deputies and the PSOE would lose two, remaining at 28.
How would the Parliament of Andalusia have been if the left had gone together?
Simulation of the distribution of seats in the Andalusian Parliament if the candidates for Por Andalucía and Adelante Andalucía had gone together and had the same votes
8. Right turn
In short, what the Andalusian elections leave is a territory that has turned to the right, which has been done with 72 deputies of the 109 that were distributed. The change is revealing since the 2015 elections, when the left-wing bloc won 57.2% of the votes in the regional elections. That percentage fell to 44.1% in 2018 and is now plummeting to 36.4%.
For its part, the right, which in 2015 only obtained 36.5% of the votes, in 2018 already obtained one out of every two ballots at the polls. Now that percentage has risen almost 10 points.
Evolution of the number of votes, percentage and seats of each block
Evolution of the number of votes, percentage of vote and number of seats in the last 3 elections in the left bloc (PSOE+Por And.+Adel. And.) and the right bloc (PP+Cs+Vox)
Source: Junta de Andalucía
9. A notice for the generals
The regional results cannot be directly extrapolated to the general results, but they do give some clues. Andalusia has always been a granary of votes for the PSOE, which helped cement its large absolute majorities in the 1980s and 1990s. The PP has always punctured, but now that distribution of forces has changed and could influence the next general elections.
If the data of this 19J is transferred to the general elections, the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo will have an important boost from Andalusia. If in 2019 they were left with only 15 seats, now they could shoot up to 34. The PSOE, for its part, will lose the 25 seats it had in that autonomous community to add only 18.
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