Turnout for the European Elections in Spain was around 45.85%, slightly higher than the EU-wide average of 43.1%, and, as was the case across Europe, voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the established major parties.
The PP can, and will, claim ‘victory’ in Spain, but they only managed to muster 26% of the votes cast. The PSOE only managed 23% of the votes, which means that the two major parties could not achieve 50% between them compared to 73.4% in the last general election.
The PP see the victory as approval for their economic policies, but with only 26% of the votes cast it is a somewhat shallow victory. The PP and PSOE, between them, managed to lose almost five million votes since the last European elections in 2009.
So, with 56% not voting and only 26% of 44% supporting the ‘winners’, hardly an overwhelming endorsement of anything except that the majority have little or no faith in the established set-up.
There is perhaps something to be said for making voting compulsory, as is the case in some other countries such as Belgium.