Add and we can fight for a diminishing vote | Spain

The alternative left – or radical, or located to the left of the PSOE, or post -communist, names are not missing – has been installed in a Free and division spiral that shrinks its space and aggravates the weakness of its parts. The trajectory of adding and we can from its Formal rupture in December 2023 Try the self -destructive effects of this loop. Face, both forces have suffered a long series of electoral varapalos. The future looks gloomy. Surveys show that the sum of their results separately is lower than What they achieved together. The last clashes delve into the same dynamic.

The history of Alternative leftthat space dominated at the beginning by the PCE or IU, later widened by Podemos And now of intermediate size, it shows that neither the unit is the balm of Fierabrás that everything cures it, nor its absence a curse that advocates failure. However, what the electoral results do and indicate the surveys is that if the forces in dispute already start from a position of weakness and confrontation, as is the case of Podemos and add, the segmentation further shrifles the electoral market of the alternative left, which came to exceed six million ten years ago and stayed in a little more than three in 2023. Although the Europeans are flour of another sack, with more abstention, with more abstention than the general illustrates the erosion of space before and after its partition: from 2.25 million votes in 2019 to 1.38 in 2024.

Another factor overshadow the perspectives for the generals: the electoral system punishes fragmentation. To this is added the greatest inclination to the so -called « useful vote », in this case to the PSOE, when the left to the left see their first options in declining path.

« If you add division and fratricidal wars to weakness, the problem is aggravated, » summarizes Ansgar SeyfferthData Expert and Director for Spain of the consultant STAT-UP Statistical Consulting & Data Science. The political scientist Alejandro Solís, author of the Newsletter On surveys The matrixaffirms that in theory to go separately it can work because « it allows to appeal to different electorates » and avoid the « cross vetoes », but in practice the only way to minimize the loss of efficiency in some generals is that at least one of the matches exceeds 12%. It is not the case. Not even adding their vote intentions we get there we can and add. The electoral analyst Jaime Miquel sees the leftist forces in « a loop » that leads them to be « increasingly faced by an increasingly small pie of cakes, and without adding stop talking about a unit that is now not only impossible, but would be a bad arrangement. »

Polls and surveys

Add, with Yolanda Díaz in front and we can inside, achieved in the generals of 2023 more than 3 million votes, 12.3%, and 31 seats, being key to the formation of the majority of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and entering his government. In December of that year, after months of tensions, we can formalized his breakup. Since then, the vigor of the alternative left has done nothing but diminish.

In Galicia, add and Podemos were separately in February 2024, taking 1.9% and 0.3%. Zero seats. In Euskadi, two months later, they repeated formula. Of the six seats of the Podemos-Iu coalition in 2020, they went to one of adding, with 3.3%. The case of Catalonia in May was different, because Podemos did not appear. The commons lost only two seats and stayed at 6. The next month the competition returned in the European ones. Sumar stayed at 4.6% and three parliamentarians; We can, in 3.3% and two. In 2019, with Podemos and IU on a single ballot, they had exceeded 10% and achieved one more position.

That is the balance at the polls. What do surveys say? So much 40DB. like him CIS They detect a setback between the vote estimate to add before we leave Podemos and the sum of what they have now separately. The fall is 11.3% to 8.4%, according to 40DB.; and from 11.8% to 11.4%, according to the CIS. Both series show to add ahead of Podemos: 5.1% to 3.3% and 7.6% to 3.8%, respectively. From the rupture, the adding line has been descending and that of Podem Sorpasso. If the objective of the purple party was to survive, it has achieved it. But not if the goal was to lead the space, even if it was a decreasing space.

Electoral System Punishment

The question that plans about this space is if there will finally be unity. Right now there is not even negotiation, and yes a lot of dispute. To the tensions inside add, the clashes between Podemos and some of the forces that were presented in the candidacy headed by Yolanda Díaz in 2023 are added, especially movement and more Madrid movement. Díaz’s party has made a Call for « Understanding »including Podemos. The Response of the Purple Party has been launch as a candidate for Irene Monterowho does not see to add in a confluence because he is « closer » of the PSOE. The Minister of Health and Most Visible Face of Más Madrid, Mónica García, has replied that she is « fed up with lessons. » Meanwhile, IU is presented as the force that tries to promote an understanding that many see already impossible.

There is unity or not, the situation is problematic. If there is not and two forces are presented – or more – the seat would get more expensive for each one. Miquel, who was an advisor in La Moncloa between 2018 and 2023, makes accounts about the hypothesis that we can achieve a million votes and add one and a half, thanks to the « soil » that IU, Compromís, more Madrid and common. « If they were together, the maximum threshold with those votes would be about 25 seats, six less than those achieved together in 2023. separately, they would be around two and four of Podemos and some twelve of add. In total, about 15. That is a guarantee of PP and Vox government, » he explains.

Addar is already among the infrareprenemed groups in relation to the vote: with 12.3% of the ballots, it has 8.8% of the seats. But that lag is far from what two different candidates would suffer. « The system especially harms those below 10%, especially in the provinces with less than seven seats. If there are two forces, one around 3-4%, and another over 6-7%, its efficiency is greatly reduced compared to that of a single one above 10%, » explains Solís, a member of the thought laboratory Ideas at war.

In 2023 Sumar already remained without representation in the 29 constituencies that distribute between one and five seats, in three that distribute six (Almería, Toledo and Gipuzkoa) and in one that distributes seven (Santa Cruz de Tenerife). Ansgar Seyfferth, who gives data management classes in IE Business School, states that « any descent » from the threshold obtained two years ago to add exposes the possibility of being out of the constituencies of six, seven and up to eight deputies.

« A good way of understanding » how could you go to add up to them separately, « he explains – is to look at the results in 2011 and UPyDwhich achieved 6.9% and 4.7% of the vote, respectively. That representation translated into eleven and five seats. That is, 11.6% of the vote accounted for 4.6% of the seats. Miquel believes that for Podemos to reach five – the same ones that he managed to add, although he later lost one with the Lilith Verstrynge resignation– There should be a change in trend and sees the dwellings closer to what IU achieved in 2008 with Gaspar Llamazares: 3.8% and two seats.

Mutual rejections

What if there was unity? « It cannot be assumed that a hypothetical union adds the votes we can and add would have separately. If the union is advantageous to reduce the punishment of the electoral system, the counterpart can be considerable loss of votes, » says Seyfferth.

The CIS proves the existence of mutual misgivings. The supporters of adding, asked why party would vote as a second option, respond in much greater percentage the PSOE (57.5%) that we can (15.8%). Those of Podemos, if they did not vote for the purple party, would also do it more for the PSOE (32.1%) than to add (30.4%). Those who are closest to the purple party value Yolanda Díaz with a suspense, a 4.8, worse than Sánchez (5,3).

In part because of these misgivings, Miquel believes that the hypothesis of a adding unity must already be erased from the analyzes, we can fix the situation, « as if the unit itself was enough. » « Even if we can enter, which I discard, it would be a bad arrangement that would remain far from the three million votes necessary to avoid the arrival of (Alberto Núñez) Feijóo and (Santiago) Abascal, » he says.

« The inclusion of Podemos in adding in 2023 was already a bad arrangement. Now it would be even worse, » adds the author of Felipe VI perestroika (RBA, 2015), for whom the forces that integrate to add must already give as « fixed » that we can go on their own and « focus on building an exciting project, capable of integrating its members under a new leadership » that represents a « breakup. »

That « new summar » should be marked as the purposes of mobilizing its electorate (15.1% say they do not know who will vote) and reduce leaks to Podemos (20.2%, according to the CIS), « leaving them at 300,000 when they are now about 700,000, » says Miquel. It would be, he adds, that adding fiee to Podemos in the same way that Vox has done it with Alvise PérezLeader of the Fiesta (Salf), leaving it in some digits that minimized the loss of electoral efficiency of the block. « It is the only way to reissue the coalition government. The other option, one that circulates in the PSOE, which Sánchez reaches 35%, 8.5 million votes and 142 seats, it is impossible. It is to think in the key of bipartisanship, stage already overcome, » he concludes.