Spring electoral roundup (II)

Another attempt to catch up with recent electoral news (the first instalment is here).

Ecuador

Ecuador voted a week ago in the second round of its presidential election (my report on August’s first round is here). It was an unusual election, produced when incumbent Guillermo Lasso invoked the “mutual death” provision of the constitution in May but then declined to run again. So although a new president was to be elected, they will only serve for the remainder of Lasso’s term, until May 2025.

In the first round, the left’s Luisa González had led with 33.6%, a million votes ahead of centrist Daniel Noboa on 23.5%. But it was always likely that Noboa would make up much of that ground, and he did just well enough, winning with 51.8% – a margin of about 370,000 votes (see official results here). González conceded defeat and congratulated her rival, a move that the Guardian tartly describes as “increasingly unusual in the region.”

At the age of 35 Noboa will become Ecuador’s youngest-ever president; his father, a wealthy banana tycoon, ran for the job unsuccessfully five times between 1998 and 2013. He has promised to attract foreign investment and to tackle the country’s serious crime problem, which won international attention earlier this year when a presidential candidate was assassinated.

Spain

Spain went to the polls back in July (see my report here), but the attempt to form a new government is only now getting serious. Incumbent centre-left prime minister Pedro Sánchez had done better than expected but was still short of an obvious majority; after a round of negotiations in August, King Felipe VI asked centre-right leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as the leader of the largest single party, to attempt to form a government.

That was never going to work. Feijóo had the support of his own People’s Party and the far-right Vox, plus the single Canary Island regionalist and the single Navarese conservative. That’s close to a majority, but not close enough: when he went to a vote on 27 and 29 September he was defeated 178 to 172.

Now Sánchez has the nomination and has to try to put together a majority that will support him out of the Socialists, his coalition partner Sumar (far left), and the Basque and Catalan separatists. He can afford a few abstentions from the Basques and Catalans – four parties, with 25 seats between them – but not many. And the clock is ticking, because if no government is formed by 27 November, parliament has to be dissolved for a fresh election.

Sánchez’s task has been made easier by the fact that Feijóo seems to have moved closer to the far right and doubled down on his opposition to any sort of concessions to the separatists. But he only has five weeks to close the deal.

Switzerland

Switzerland went to the polls yesterday for its regular general election, and produced a result very much in line with expectations (see my preview here). The far-right SVP remained the largest party, with 28.6% of the vote (up 3.0%) and 62 of the 200 seats in the lower house (up nine). That puts it back almost exactly where it was prior to the last election. (See official results here.)

Its three colleagues in government all basically held their ground: the Social Democrats with 18.0% and 41 seats (up 1.1% and two seats), the Centre (centre-right) with 14.6% and 29 seats (up 1.0% and one seat from the sum of its two component parties last time) and the Liberals with 14.4% and 28 seats (down 0.7% and one seat).

The big losers were the Greens [link added], who dropped 3.8% to 9.4% and lost five of their 28 seats, and the Green Liberals, who were only down 0.6% of the vote (to 7.2%) but were unlucky on seats, losing six of their 16. But that too only represents the loss of part of their 2019 gain; they are still well ahead of where they were in 2015, when they won 11.7% and 18 seats between them. And since even the exceptional 2019 result wasn’t enough to secure either of them a seat in government, that’s not likely to change this time.

Argentina

Finally to Argentina, which also voted yesterday, in the first round of its presidential election. With counting almost complete (98.4% in), the candidate of the incumbent party, left-Peronist Sergio Massa, has exceeded expectations and has a clear lead, with 36.7% of the vote (official results here). But that’s a long way short of the mark needed to avoid a runoff, and his prospects in that are far from good.

In second place is “libertarian” Javier Milei, who has 30.0%, less than the polls had suggested but well clear of the centre-right’s Patricia Bullrich with 23.8%. Right-Peronist Juan Schiaretti was a long way behind on 6.8%, while Trotskyist Myriam Bergman brought up the rear with 2.7%. (Turnout was 77.7%, down 2.7% on 2019.) Massa and Milei will contest the second round on 19 November.

Given Argentina’s economic woes, it makes sense that many voters would be attracted by Milei’s proposed free-market reforms and ignore his hostility to civil rights and democracy. And the precedents suggest that most centre-right voters will rally to the far right rather than support a candidate from the left. Even so, with a lead of about 1.75 million votes Massa cannot be written off; the fact that Milei underperformed his polls may mean that his star is on the wane.

The legislature will clearly remain divided: on preliminary results, the left-Peronists have taken 49 of the 130 open seats in the lower house, as against 28 each for the centre-right and the “libertarians” and 25 others.