Spanish PM set for big defeat in key battleground of Andalusia

MADRID • Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Socialists were yesterday heading for a heavy electoral defeat in the country's most populous region of Andalusia, highlighting the scale of the challenge he faces to win re-election in a national vote due next year.

Mr Sanchez and his government have been struggling to cope with the economic fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has helped push inflation to the highest in more than three decades and sparked protests over soaring fuel prices in the euro area's fourth largest economy.

Mr Sanchez has indicated he plans to call a general election in December next year, and although his socialist workers' party PSOE still has a small lead in national opinion polls, the gap with the conservative Popular Party (PP) has narrowed.

In office since 2018, the 50-year-old has been plagued by run-ins with his junior partner in government, the far-left Podemos party.

According to recent polls, his Socialists were expected to lose ground in yesterday's vote in Andalusia, the party's historical stronghold in the south that it lost in 2018 after 36 years in power.

The PP is expected to double its support to more than 40 per cent and secure a near absolute majority of the 109 seats in the regional Parliament, a recent survey showed.

"Andalusia is a thermometer for national sentiment," said Professor Irene Delgado, who teaches political science at UNED University in Madrid.

"The Prime Minister will have to pay close attention to the outcome in what used to be a bastion for the Socialists."

The PP's strong showing in the region around Sevilla is partly due to popular regional leader Juan Manuel Moreno, whose success is helping the party move on from a spying scandal that brought down its national leader earlier this year.

Even if the PP trounces the Socialists as predicted, it remains unclear if it will be able to form a government without the far-right Vox party, which was formed by PP dissidents and which polls suggested would come in third yesterday.

Vox already joined a regional administration for the first time when it partnered with the PP in the Castile and Leon region after strong results in a February vote.

The PP's current coalition partner in Andalusia, the centre-right Ciudadanos, may not muster enough votes to win a single seat in the regional Parliament, and the embattled party is in danger of falling off the national political map.

With about 18 per cent of Spain's population, Andalusia is a key battleground in a nation where politics is still overshadowed by the Catalan secession crisis. The southern region, the size of Portugal, is one of the poorest in the country.

BLOOMBERG