Spain and Elections

Back in December of 2015....Spain had a 'normal' election.  Results?  Well....you had two parties (Social Democracy and Conservative Christian Democracy) who got near 72-percent of the national vote.  The remaining vote?  Three parties took a weaker situation with around 16-percent of the vote. 

So building a coalition?  This turned into a mess.  A lot of this leads back to the Basque region, but some relates to parties not able to reach a clear public opinion.

So in June of 2016....they held another election. 

Results?  You had three parties (the Left-Wing Populist group joined the Social Democracy and Conservative Christian Democracy) gaining 70-percent of the vote.  The Liberalism Party took around 14-percent, and then six minor parties taking the remainder. 

Forming a coalition?  No, it ended with a minority government.  This marginally worked, until the spring of this year. 

So another election occurred (April 2019).  76-percent of the public went with the same top three parties of 2016.  Yeah, a real shocker....voters didn't change their minds.  In fact, even the remaining 24-percent kinda split up the same as before. 

A coalition situation?  Not really.

So we are approaching 10 November 2019, with yet another election.

Any changes?  Well, there's this factor in the past day or two....a new party called 'Mas Pais' (More Country is the translation).  What they say is that they want all the disillusioned left-wing people to come over to their campaign.

What may happen?  Polls can't factor this in so quickly, but it might subtract some votes away from the two parties which lean left.  Mas Pais might take 10-percent, but it's basically carving off votes, and making this a bit more difficult to build a coalition.

The odds of another election by fall of 2020?  If you read through journalistic comments....no one talks about this, and they tend to avoid the suggestion that politics in Spain has reached a frustrating level with the general public.  The Basque question a major issue?  It doesn't appear to be as big as some might think.  There were five political parties from the Catalan region, and they combined to take around 7-percent of the vote.  If they had gone to one central party for their region?  That might have more authority, but that's simply not going to happen.

So if you wanted a good demonstration about coalitions and how they sometimes are dysfunctional....Spain would be a good example.