Spain is having a decisive day for the general elections this Sunday, when the next Parliament will be determined. After the seats are distributed, the party with the majority will be able to form a government.
(In context: Spain: for the right to win elections, but what does it mean to not have a majority?)
98 percent of the votes counted The People’s Party (PP) has a slight advantage with 32.55% of the vote (136 seats) and the Socialist Party (PSOE) 32.01% (122 seats).
At least 175 MPs are needed to form a government in Spain, so if this trend in the census is confirmed, the formations will have to seek pacts, as recent polls predicted.
In principle, the Vox party, the main potential ally of the PP, gets 33 seats. PSOE’s main ally, Sumar, gets 31 seats.
In this scenario, small parties will be key and different party blocs (PSOE-Sumar on one side and PP-Vox on the other hand) will have to go out and look for other alliances to get 175 votes.
Polls opened at 9am (local time) and closed around 8pm. The turnout in the general elections held in Spain this Sunday was 70.18 percent.It is almost four points above the figures that reached 66.23 percent recorded in the previous elections on November 10, 2019.
Bilgi thanked citizens for their participation in the polls and the normalcy of the day, at a press conference organized by Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and government spokesperson Isabel Rodríguez.
Despite the heat and the holiday period, the influx of citizens to polling stations was more than expected, but this should be taken into account in participation. 2.4 million votes were calculated by mail, a historical figure in Spanish democracy.
Despite this, many voters wanted to attend this polling event in person, suggesting the return of a weekend when eleven of the sixteen Spanish autonomous communities were on alert for high temperatures.
The four main candidates – the current head of the opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo (PP); Head of Government Pedro Sánchez (PSOE); Yolanda Díaz (Sumar) vice-president for executive and right-wing leader Santiago Abascal (Vox).
Of the voters residing in Spain, 1,639,179 will be able to participate in the general elections for the first time since the previous general election held on 10 November 2019.
The Spanish general elections, in which representatives of the Congress and the Senate are directly elected, are held every four years, unless, as on this occasion, an early termination of the President of the Presidential Decree occurs.
210 thousand ballot boxes and 59 thousand ballot boxes were set up for those who will vote this Sunday, 85 million envelopes were distributed to the ballot boxes.
Nationwide, there are 549 announced candidates for Congress and 544 for Senate.
Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs for Communications, Francesc Vallès and Under-Secretary of the Interior Isabel Goicoechea announced this Saturday that everything is ready for the elections to take place “in a completely normal way” and praised the “robust, safe and well-designed” electoral system.
At the press conference, both government representatives thanked the work carried out by more than 90,000 State security forces and bodies that will create the security device.
INTERNATIONAL ARTICLE
TIME
Source: Exame
