Although it is not fashionable to quote him, it was José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero who, when he led the PSOE and was President of the Government (2004-2011), elevated the triumph of the right in Andalusia to the category of “miracle”. What was considered a supernatural event occurred in the last year of his mandate, when Mariano Rajoy's PP surpassed the all-powerful PSOE of Andalusia in votes and seats. The miracle is now common: the PP has won the last five elections in the community. The PSOE today is a pale reflection of what it was and the projections in each province of the electoral model developed by EL PAÍS point to another electoral defeat, digging downwards, in the autonomy that contributes the most seats to Congress.
According to this newspaper's model, based on 20,000 election simulations, the PP could keep 25 of the 60 Andalusian deputies, one less than in 2023 due to the loss of population in Cádiz. The socialists would leave three of the 21 they have now and Vox could rise from nine to 14. Frente Amplio (the coalition that includes, among others, Izquierda Unida, a force with a stable structure and municipal implementation in Andalusia) would not obtain representation, as happened with another electoral brand in the general elections of 2004 and 2008. And Adelante Andalucía would debut in Congress with three seats in the provinces of Seville, Malaga and Cádiz. There is no news from Podemos.
PP analysts estimate that Adelante, which quadrupled its seats in the regional elections in May of this year, has become a “safe haven vote” for the socialist voter in Andalusia, where the left is divided into four ballots. The president of the Political Communication Association, Ana Salazar, assures that if this forecast is confirmed, it would be “a transformation of who politically represents that space in Andalusia, because Adelante is not only a left-wing force, but is also differentiated by its identity character that, since the disappearance of the Andalusian Party, had lost political space in the community.”
Paco Camas, director of Public Opinion Research at Ipsos, agrees: “The voter who is not going to make the decision from the point of view of utility, but more from ideology, the alternative on the table is Adelante.” Sergio Pascual, anthropologist and former Secretary of Organization of Podemos, adds: "Adelante could surprise us. It draws mainly from the Frente Amplio and the young vote and is leading many people to abstain." This party is going to play the trick of presenting itself as a “different, fresh left, to stand on its feet on the right.” From Frente Amplio they believe that “there is a fight” and that the campaign will be decisive.
The PSOE comes in a battered state. It has lost the last five electoral calls in this community (two regional elections, some municipal elections, some general elections and some European elections) and everything indicates that it could add a sixth defeat in Andalusia. On this occasion, furthermore, and always according to the forecasts, something could happen that touches the heart of the PSOE: becoming the second force in Seville, losing the unbeaten record maintained since the first democratic elections in 1977. Pedro Sánchez opened the campaign on Thursday in the Andalusian capital with a packed Congress Palace and with Begoña Gómez as the star figure.
Seville, which brings together the most socialist militants in the country, has enormous symbolic and sentimental weight, one of the few red islands on the mostly blue map of Spain. Its general secretary, Javier Fernández de los Ríos, trusts “in mobilization and the urban vote” to continue winning in Seville, where they now have five of the 12 seats at stake. The difference in votes in 2023 with the PP was only 34,097.
Neither Camas nor Pascual see it as clear that this surprise in Seville will occur because they doubt the capacity of the right's mobilization and see the competition between PP and Vox as decisive. Salazar analyzes: “Losing the first position in Seville would be losing a fundamental part of its political and emotional geography.”
Rightization
Is there a right movement in Andalusia? Since 2012, the community has moved 0.41 points to the right, according to ideological self-location data from the Center for Sociological Research (CIS), and that explains, according to Salazar, “the consolidation of the right as a government option in a community that for decades was identified with socialist hegemony.” In the 2023 general elections, the right bloc achieved 51.7% of the votes. For Camas, Andalusia is no exception compared to the rest of the territories: “The left loses and the right wins, which would make the PP-Vox majority easier and more difficult to reissue a majority like the current one.”
Pascual disagrees: "The right in Andalusia has reached its ceiling, it is difficult for it to rise further in net numbers. If in 2023 it seemed that Andalusia had gone to the right, it is because the left had lost 250,000 votes, because there was part of society that stopped going to vote."
The analysts consulted assure that participation can be decisive in ending up shifting the balance of forces and, in this sense, the unknown is whether the left will be able to recover the 250,000 votes it lost in 2023. Pascual recalls that Andalusians vote more in the general elections than in the regional elections. “The PSOE of Andalusia has disappointed the Andalusian voter, but in the general elections it continues to have a different view,” he points out. Camas draws attention to the importance of the useful vote: “It will be significantly higher than usual and especially on the left,” he points out. A dilemma that is more pronounced in Andalusia because the voter must decide between PSOE, Frente Amplio, Podemos and Adelante Andalucía. “The effect of the useful vote is going to go towards the PSOE,” he predicts.
Both experts assume that Frente Amplio will not obtain representation in Andalusia. Not even IU's traditional strength in the community will be enough. "I believe that the party will keep the votes that IU traditionally obtained before Podemos joined it in 2015. It is a faithful, historic voter," says Pascual. "IU has a very strong responsibility, but in these elections people no longer even vote for IU and it is very difficult to identify that Frente Amplio is the IU candidacy. It is a brand that is not in the collective imagination of the left and that carries an impressive melancholy, because there has been a failure in the leftist candidacy," says Camas, in relation to the frustrated expectation that Rufián would lead that confluence. Salazar highlights that, despite the fact that IU retains a much more solid territorial structure than Adelante, “it does not seem to connect with the electorate from the left to the left of the PSOE in 2026.”
Regarding the growth of Vox compared to the Andalusians, where it barely increased in votes, Pascual and Camas agree that it does so at the expense of the PP. "The voter is thinking about the leader, they think about Abascal versus Feijóo. The strength of the PP in Andalusia has to do with the candidate, Juan Manuel Moreno, with an image job that has been done very well, but that has nothing to do with the negative image that Feijóo has. And that in the distribution of seats for the PP could turn out worse than what the polls are predicting," maintains the first. The director of Public Opinion Research at Ipsos emphasizes: “It is true that Vox has managed to penetrate less well-off social layers, but ideologically it is not a transversal party, it is very located on the right and that is its main source of votes, although it also has a percentage of PSOE votes, but very small.”
