Current polls in Spain show an outcome nearly identical the December election in which no party or coalition of parties could foster a majority.
In the past week, Podemos managed to form a coalition with leftist parties IU and Confluencias, to possibly become the second largest party in Spain, but that does not change the math.
A poll by Celeste-Tel between May 5 and May 7, as reported by El Economista follows.
December 2015 Election
There are 350 seats in Spain’s parliament. Courtesy of the BBC, the 2015 election went like this (blue highlights mine).
Party Leaders
- PP – Former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy
- PSOE – Pedro Sanchez
- Podemos – Pablo Iglesias
- Ciudadanos – Albert Rivera
Coalition Problems
- PSOE and PP could have formed a coalition, but the result would not have been stable. The party leaders do not get along and the left and right generally don’t mix.
- The three other parties could have formed a coalition, but Podemos is eurosckeptic and in favor of letting Catalonia have a vote on independence. The other two parties are staunch nationalists as well as staunch euro supporters.
- Ciudadanos ruled out forming a coalition with Podemos for philosophical reasons noted above.
- Ciudadanos was formed as an anti-corruption party and wants nothing to do with Mariano Rajoy and his totally corrupt PP Popular Party either.
The recent poll shows nothing has changed.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Indeed, nothing is likely to change. However, please note that Ciudadanos is nationalist, center-right rather than center-left as you’ve mentioned. Ciudadanos will be willing to join a PP led coalition under a leader that is not implicated in corruption like Rajoy is.
in fact, Ciudadanos is an anti-nationalist party, which has already set alliances both with PP (not “PPOE” !); for example in the Madrid region and with PSOE, for example in Andalucia.
Spain = Greece = Brain dead populace that somehow believes that more government and a different brand of socialism are the answer to their problems rather than the cause 🙂
Ciudadanos floats around centre, tend to be to the right in terms of law and territorial integrity, but they are not nationalistic in the term that would be used to describe PP, which is essentially politically descendant from the past dictatorial or fascist reality of the country (albeit moderated and evolved from that nowadays there is no denying an underlying essence).
They avoided a pact with PP at national level due to the endless corruption that has mired the party, as well as not seeing a pact passing through to government as the other parties would have blocked it. When I say pact, it would have been to allow PP through but basically keep a free hand to cut it down afterwards if needed – political pragmatism.
So they opted to work with PSOE , another pragmatic choice given the sum of all the left have a majority, as well as PSOE being moderate to work with.
If PP and Ciudadanos combined should add up to a majority, they may pact with PP, but it would be a difficult relationship.
The main question really is if PSOE allows in a government of national unity (along with Ciudadanos and headed by PP) or if it will side with the far left, both options are fraught with difficulty as far as governing the country afterwards is concerned.
Mind your sources, Mish. The ones you have used for this post are -again- grossly inaccurate. El Economista could not possibly write PPOE instead of PP. Ciudadanos is not a leftist party. I am beginning to seriously question your credibility regarding *any* subject.
Good grief
Wikiepdia calls Ciudadanos a centre-left to centre-right party
My source in Spain called them left-leaning. Call them center – I will gladly make the change to suit you.
How they lean is not the point – the obvious point is they will not form a coalition with PP or Podemos
I copied PPOE from somewhere, possibly even a mistake I made previously. Typos happen.
By the way in its description of the party – Wikipedia says
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_%28Spanish_political_party%29
“Citizens (Spanish: Ciudadanos) officially Citizens – Party of the Citizenry, is a liberal political party in Spain which is described by itself as centre-left and postnationalist. Citizens presents itself as a party which offers a mix of social democracy and liberal-progressive positions on its platform.”
“social democracy and liberal-progressive positions on its platform” sure as hell sounds “left” to me.
But to suit you I changed it to “center left”
It’s all relative Ricky. If you are ultra-nationalist the rest are to the left… or centre in EU terms is socialist or left to other countries… the far left is sometimes nationalist, but not in the manner that springs to mind, tending to mean statist on behalf of the people, or something like that. It is confusing and depends what lens you are using to understand it, monetary, law, society, tradition, fiscal, etc.etc..
Ciudadanos is closer to the EU version of center, but it has barely governed… look at CiU, labelled center right but by some measures could easily be called socialist…and so on.
Less government is good. No government is better.
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