The xenophobic party won twelve of the 109 seats in the Sunday elections after culling more than 90 percent of the vote, giving the right wing parties a majority. For decades, Andalusia has been a stronghold of the Socialist Workers‘ Party of Spain (PSOE). The election was considered a test of sentiment for the socialist government led by Pedro Sánchez in Madrid.
Its party, the PSOE, clearly won with around 28 percent of the vote, but lost in comparison to last election whole 14 seats (minus 7 percent). This was followed by the conservative Christian Democratic Partido Popular (PP) with 26 seats in front of the center-right liberals of Ciudadanos (German: citizens), which were surprisingly with 21 seats third strongest force and could win the election in 2015 12 new seats. The Podemos offshoot Adelante Andalucia came to 16.2 percent and a total of 17 seats, becoming the fourth strongest force before Vox. It is the first time since the reintroduction of democracy in Spain following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 that an ultra-right party is moving into a Spanish regional parliament. Vox got a lot more votes than expected. Polls had predicted a maximum of five seats for the party.
It remains unclear which parties could form a future government. A left alliance of the PSOE with the acting Prime Minister Susana Díaz Pacheco and Adelante Andalucia missed a common majority. The two bourgeois parties of the PP and Cuidanos would only have a majority together with the votes of the right-wing populist Vox.
The Andalusian election marks the start of a series of votes in Spain, ranging from local and regional elections to the European elections in May. Andalusia is the most populated region in Spain with 8.4 million inhabitants. Since 1982, all Prime Ministers have been appointed by the PSOE. In just four decades, she was not once the strongest party in the regional parliament. Regional President Pacheco had called early elections after the Socialists lost support from Ciuadadanos. However, she is accused of having made a one-dimensional election campaign focused solely on her personality.
