Election race in Spain tight but Prime Minister Sanchez behind

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Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was trailing in the country’s general election on Sunday night, behind his conservative rival Alberto Núñez Feijoa, but the race was unexpectedly close with more than 90 percent of the vote counted.

Initial results defied most pollsters’ predictions that Feijoo’s People’s Party would comfortably edge out the incumbent socialist leader in coalition with the far-right Vox party, but the results could still change significantly after the final count.

With 93.1 percent of the vote counted, Fizeau’s PP was on course to become the largest party in Spain’s 350-seat Congress with 136 seats, but fell short of the absolute majority needed to take office and, even in coalition with Vox, with 33 seats, did not reach the 176-seat threshold.

Sánchez was second to his Socialists on 122 seats, but reaching an absolute majority in coalition with the new leftist party Sumar and the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties, which have voted alongside the prime minister since 2018, could give him a chance.

The close race signaled that Spain could be bracing for weeks or months of messy negotiations over possible parliamentary deals, or face re-election, as it did after inconclusive elections in 2015 and 2019.

Sanchez, 51, called an immediate general election after his party suffered a crushing defeat in municipal and regional elections in late May, gambling that he would do better in July than wait until the expected election date in December.

He predicted that he would win “despite the odds” and in the final days of the campaign raised his warnings about the dangers of a potential PP-Vox coalition, which he said would drag the country back to “1973” by 2023.

Vox, led by 47-year-old Santiago Abascal, denies human-caused climate change, opposes Muslim immigration, disputes the idea of ​​gender-based violence and wants to overturn legislation strengthening LGBT+ rights.

Fizzou, 61, focused his campaign on a personal criticism of “sanchismo”, which he defined as a political cult of “lies, manipulation and wickedness”. He launched fierce attacks on Sánchez’s controversial political alliance with the pro-independence parties of Catalonia and the Basque Country, which had enabled the prime minister to pass his landmark legislative reforms.

Get Free Spanish Politics Updates

we will send you one myFT Daily Digest Latest Email Rounding spanish politics News every morning.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was trailing in the country’s general election on Sunday night, behind his conservative rival Alberto Núñez Feijoa, but the race was unexpectedly close with more than 90 percent of the vote counted.

Initial results defied most pollsters’ predictions that Feijoo’s People’s Party would comfortably edge out the incumbent socialist leader in coalition with the far-right Vox party, but the results could still change significantly after the final count.

With 93.1 percent of the vote counted, Fizeau’s PP was on course to become the largest party in Spain’s 350-seat Congress with 136 seats, but fell short of the absolute majority needed to take office and, even in coalition with Vox, with 33 seats, did not reach the 176-seat threshold.

Sánchez was second to his Socialists on 122 seats, but reaching an absolute majority in coalition with the new leftist party Sumar and the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties, which have voted alongside the prime minister since 2018, could give him a chance.

The close race signaled that Spain could be bracing for weeks or months of messy negotiations over possible parliamentary deals, or face re-election, as it did after inconclusive elections in 2015 and 2019.

Sanchez, 51, called an immediate general election after his party suffered a crushing defeat in municipal and regional elections in late May, gambling that he would do better in July than wait until the expected election date in December.

He predicted that he would win “despite the odds” and in the final days of the campaign raised his warnings about the dangers of a potential PP-Vox coalition, which he said would drag the country back to “1973” by 2023.

Vox, led by 47-year-old Santiago Abascal, denies human-caused climate change, opposes Muslim immigration, disputes the idea of ​​gender-based violence and wants to overturn legislation strengthening LGBT+ rights.

Fizzou, 61, focused his campaign on a personal criticism of “sanchismo”, which he defined as a political cult of “lies, manipulation and wickedness”. He launched fierce attacks on Sánchez’s controversial political alliance with the pro-independence parties of Catalonia and the Basque Country, which had enabled the prime minister to pass his landmark legislative reforms.