European elections 2024: The PSOE endures thanks to the strength of Catalonia and confirms its weakness in Andalusia | European elections 2024 | News

The PSOE has closed the 2024 electoral carousel preceded by the Galician, Basque and Catalan elections without completing the comeback that made some leaders dream of a victory against the odds, but saving the plebiscite that Alberto Núñez Feijóo intended to convert the European elections into. The two seats difference that the PP has gained over the socialists (22-20) cannot be interpreted as the overwhelming victory that Génova predicted for months, in which it came to think that it would double the PSOE in seats, but still Pedro Sánchez , which threw itself into the campaign with ten acts, leaves 9-J with some scratches by obtaining 700,000 fewer votes than the popular ones and being the first force in only three communities: Catalonia, the Canary Islands and Navarra, as well as in two of the three provinces of Euskadi (Bizkaia and Álava).

Once again, the PSC has been the great support of the socialists, with support of 30.63% compared to 13.77% for the winning party of the night. The result in Catalonia has been decisive in keeping the PSOE above 30% of the vote, but with one seat less than in 2019 and four points behind the PP (34.19% to 30.18%). However, the socialists can see the seams in what has been their main breadbasket for decades, Andalusia, where the PP has obtained a greater differential than in the rest of the country (37.86% compared to 32.16 %). But it is in Castilla-La Mancha, whose president, the socialist Emiliano García-Page, has been one of the most critical against the amnesty to the point of announcing that he intends to appeal it to the Constitutional Court, where the PP bites with the most damage, with ten points of advantage. In Asturias, the other autonomy chaired by the socialists along with Navarra, the PP prevails, but by a narrower margin of 1.77 points. In the regional community, chaired by María Chivite, the socialists win by seven tenths.

The PP also increases the advantage of the general elections of 23-J, in which it obtained an insufficient victory to govern with the PSOE closer, at only 1.4 points and 340,000 votes. Almost a year later, the distance doubles in the European elections, which is 4 points and 700,000 ballots. The reading they make in Ferraz is that the PP has fallen far short of the expectations it generated and they give as an example the popular victory of 1994, by six seats, more than 1.7 million votes and nine points of difference that preceded the change. cycle at Moncloa two years later with the replacement of Felipe González by José María Aznar. The result of 9-J is more similar to that of 2009, the other time that the PP won while in opposition, also by two seats and just over half a million votes.

The arrival of Pedro Sánchez in Ferraz, after 10:30 p.m., has led to the belief that the Europeans would have a tighter night. They even put on spotlights early in the afternoon and contemplated setting up a stage to celebrate the result in Ferraz, which was left soulless. Latest tracking PSOE’s internal vote on Saturday put it in the same range as the PP, with between 21 and 22 seats. A situation very similar to what its internal data estimated at the halfway point of the campaign, in which a 40% probability was given of the victory of the PP by two seats (22-20), the same as the tie between 21 MEPs. .

Surrounded by militants in Ferraz and the 10 ministers and other members of the PSOE leadership who supported her on election night, the socialist candidate, Teresa Ribera, celebrated a result that truncates the PP’s objective. “If Feijóo considered these elections as a plebiscite against the President of the Government, the plebiscite has been lost and it has been a resounding failure,” she stated in an appearance in the hall of the PSOE headquarters. “The figures show that what the PP has done is absorb all the Ciudadanos seats; However, the cost of his strategy has been high for the citizens due to the polarization and the assumption of far-right political discourse and not having weakened it,” he stated, blaming the leader of the PP for being the cause of the irruption into the European Parliament. of the candidacy of the ultra agitator Alvise Pérez with three MEPs. “Before the far-right International had two faces and now it has three. “That is not good news for Spanish society,” said Ribera, who highlighted that the result of the European elections “is practically identical to that of July 23.” “That is, this permanent mud machine has taken us to the same place, supporting the President of the Government and Secretary General. We are the containment dam of the extreme right here and in Europe,” she added to applause. “Congratulations to Teresa Ribera and the entire PSOE for this extraordinary campaign and the magnificent results obtained. The PSOE becomes the only government option capable of confronting the far-right wave that is sweeping Europe and Spain,” Sánchez later added on social networks, who has committed to “continue working to consolidate a Europe of progress and progress.” ”.

In a campaign marked by the approval of the amnesty, the PSOE has been subjected to a series of adversities that have tested its resilience. The summons of her as an accused of Begoña Gómez on July 5 for alleged influence peddling and private corruption shook up the final stretch, although the PSOE turned her into an asset to mobilize her electorate. In what has been a reissue of the Sanxe Dog of 23-J, Sánchez has reconverted other right-wing slogans in this campaign, making the motto of the extreme right his own and encouraging “lefties” to vote for the PSOE, urging left-wing agitation and voting useful to the socialists . “Whoever can vote, should vote for the PSOE,” he stated at the end of the campaign, in a twist on José María Aznar’s “Whoever can do, let him do.”

The election of Ribera as a candidate, with such a marked green profile, has been a message in itself and a declaration of intentions by Pedro Sánchez in response to the rise of the far-right and climate denialist wave. The commitment to the third vice president and Minister of Ecological Transition has allowed the PSOE to resist at the expense of its Government partners and monopolize a transversal ecological vote, breaking into the Sumar electorate with force, with which it has compensated for the annoying socialist voters. with the measure of grace to the Catalan independence movement.

The recognition of the Palestinian State in the campaign – the intention was to do it earlier, but it was delayed so that it coincided with Norway and Ireland and to be able to present an aligned position – has been another important measure within the PSOE’s strategy of appealing to its status as left of government and concentrate progressive voters on the socialist acronyms, with special attention to young people, as has been seen in the university camps. The Palestinian cause has been one more factor that has contributed to preventing the PP from winning by KO and the PSOE from being able to sell a technical tie as a success. A result, in short, that has been experienced in Ferraz with relief but without celebration, even though the Spanish socialists are going to once again be the ones that contribute the most seats to the social democratic bench.

_