Early election returns showed the Socialist Party of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez running neck-and-neck Sunday with the conservative Popular Party.
By CIARÁN GILES and JOSEPH WILSON
“It was a Pyrrhic victory for the Popular Party, which is unable to form a government,” said political analyst Verónica Fumanal, adding the conservatives will now have to reach out to the far-right, and even then it won’t be enough. “I see a deadlock scenario in the Parliament.” With 98% of votes counted, PP is on track for 136 seats. Even with the 33 seats that the far-right Vox is poised to get and the one seat going to an allied party, the PP would still be seven seats from the absolute majority.
Even if this goes to a new ballot, Sánchez can add this election night to yet another comeback in his career that has been built around beating the odds. The 51-year-old Sánchez had to mount a mutiny among rank-and-file Socialists to return to heading his party before he won Spain’s only no-confidence vote to oust his PP predecessor in 2018.
Vox, which had hoped to force its way into power much as other far-right parties have done in other European countries, lost 19 seats from four years earlier.“Pedro Sánchez, despite losing the elections, can block investiture and, even worse, Pedro Sánchez could even be invested with the support of communism, the coup-seeking separatism and terrorism, all of whom will now have more leverage in the blackmail than in his previous term,” he said.
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