A media outlet closely aligned with the Popular Party refutes its zero-sum theory regarding Vox

For some years now, the People's Party (PP) and its affiliated media have been maintaining a theory about center-right votes.

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This theory supports the idea that votes for center-right parties (to use the common media expression) are a zero-sum game; that is, what the People's Party gains, Vox loses, and vice versa. In other words, a gain for one party necessarily implies a loss for the other.

According to this theory, the ideal scenario would be for both parties to form a coalition to capture the largest possible number of votes, ignoring two facts: firstly, that both parties have very different programs and discourses, and in certain aspects, hardly compatible; and secondly, that a coalition would demobilize many voters who distrust either of them. These objections are what often lead some leaders and media outlets aligned with the PP to suggest that the only solution would be the disappearance of Vox, as if Vox voters would vote for the PP simply because they don't have a party aligned with their values ​​to vote for.

Two years ago I already pointed out here a fact that some overlook: that Vox mobilizes many voters that the PP is not able to mobilize, either because they do not agree with the PP's positions or because they had a very bad experience with that party, without the PP currently having done anything to regain their trust.

Interestingly, today a media outlet very close to the PP refutes the zero-sum theory that the party headquarters at Génova 13 (the PP's headquarters) often uses against Vox. The newspaper La Razón states that today the PP would obtain between 147 and 149 seats and Vox between 54 and 56. Thus, the combined seats of both parties would exceed 200. In the almost half-century of democracy in Spain, only one party has managed to surpass the 200-seat mark: the PSOE in 1982, a year after the attempted coup of February 23, which served to mobilize left-wing voters massively.

The People's Party (PP) has never managed to win more than 200 seats, nor has it even come close to that number in its results in the Congress of Deputies. The PP obtained its best result in 2011, with 186 seats, after several years of a severe economic crisis exacerbated by the socialist policies of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government. In 2000, the PP won 183 seats with José María Aznar as its candidate for re-election as Prime Minister. In both cases, the Socialist Party (PSOE) was, as it is now, at a very low point. The PP's third-best result was in 1996 with 156 seats, after 14 years of PSOE governments and with the party mired in scandals of corruption and state terrorism (the GAL case).

One of the biggest problems the PP has is thinking that all center-right votes belong to it. This idea underlies many messages that the party and its media outlets broadcast whenever new elections are on the horizon. According to this idea, any political alternative on the center-right would be a favor to the left. In fact, those close to the PP have been clumsily spreading the theory that the existence of Vox benefits the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), because it would serve to split the center-right vote.

Once again, reality contradicts propaganda. Without Vox, many of those votes would go to abstention or blank ballots. In fact, Vox is managing to mobilize former left-wing voters that the PP was never able to mobilize, by focusing on issues such as illegal immigration and insecurity, discrimination created in the name of feminism, and the controversial tenets of gender ideology—issues that alienate many left-wing voters and push them away from their traditional parties. These are issues on which the PP has often aligned itself with the left, which is why many voters now distrust that party to present an alternative on these matters.

The only remaining question is: Would the combined seats of the PP and Vox make a new government possible? Some may find this question shocking, but I think a post-election alliance between the two parties is too often taken for granted. Right now, the European People's Party is allied with the Socialists in the European Commission, and its top leaders are distancing themselves from Vox's European group, Patriots for Europe, rejecting any pact with them. When the time comes, will Spain be an exception?

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Photos: Vox / Partido Popular.