Much of the analysis of Andalusia’s swing to the right has focused on increased nationalist sentiment in the wake of last year’s Catalan independence crisis. During the Andalusian campaign the two major right-wing forces, the Popular Party (PP) and Ciudadanos (C’s, Citizens), not only stressed the ongoing threat to Spanish territorial unity but also sought to equate a vote for the PSOE with backing for regional “separatists.” Indeed, it kicked off with the PP’s new hard-right leader Pablo Casado accusing PSOE prime minister Pedro Sánchez of being a “golpista” or coup-plotter because of his dependence on Catalan parties for his parliamentary majority.
Such rhetoric played well among conservative voters, and was indicative of an increasingly radicalized Spanish right. Yet probably decisive in securing their electoral majority was a historic abstention among left-wing voters. If the combined support of the right-wing bloc increased by 275,000 votes in comparison with the 2015 elections, this cannot fully account for the 700,000 lost votes between the PSOE and the Podemos–United Left coalition, Adelante Andalucía. As the United Left (IU) leader Alberto Garzón stressed, the reactionary bloc’s electoral weight “would not have been so great except for demobilization in working-class neighborhoods.” [...]
The results in the Andalusian contest also show how this intense competition is reshaping the balance of forces on the Spanish right. Aside from Vox’s historic twelve-seat breakthrough in the regional parliament, Ciudadanos won twenty-one seats — more than doubling its previous total of nine — while the PP lost seven seats even as it finished second overall, behind the PSOE. The viable governing options on the table will either be an unholy trinity of the PP, Ciudadanos, and Vox or a center-right coalition of the PP, PSOE, and Ciudadanos. [...]
This is where Vox comes in. Through some clever marketing – like staging its party conference at Vistalegre, where Podemos held its own famously heated congresses — Vox has effectively worked itself into the space of the “new right” and the “anti-left.” They are the most explicitly anti-independentist, anti-Podemos, anti-left party in Spain, with discourse steeped in openly anti-feminist and anti-LGBT rhetoric. The party did not have any specific program or initiatives for Andalusia as part of its electoral campaign, but it still managed to make the dramatic breakthrough it did.
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