The rightward shift in four regional elections in the last six months would suggest, prima facie, that the conservative Popular Party (PP) will be returned to power at the next general election due by August 2027. Yet everything might still be up for grabs.
Elections in Extremadura (last December), Castile and León (March), Aragón (March) and Andalusia (May), all of them regions already governed by the PP, saw the party hold onto its position, with varying degrees of success.
In Extremadura the PP won one more seat and after four months of on-off negotiations –with the possibility of having to hold the elections again–, agreed to form another coalition government with the populist anti-immigration party VOX (see Figure 1). VOX, which left the government in 2024 over immigration policy differences, as it did in Castile and León and Aragón for the same reason, won six more seats. The election in Extremadura was held two years in advance because the government was unable to obtain sufficient support for its 2026 budget.
The price of VOX’s support in all four regions was acceptance of its policy of giving priority to Spaniards over immigrants in areas such as housing and social spending. VOX railed against the central government’s ongoing amnesty for at least 500,000 undocumented migrants. Depending on how this policy is implemented, the Socialist-led minority coalition government, in power since 2018, could challenge it as unconstitutional in the courts.
Figure 1. Results of main parties in Extremadura’s elections, seats and % of votes
| 2025 | 2023 | |||
| Seats | % of votes | Seats | % of votes | |
| Popular Party | 29 | 43.2 | 28 | 38.8 |
| Socialists | 18 | 25.7 | 28 | 39.9 |
| PP + Socialists | 47 | 68.9 | 56 | 78.4 |
| VOX | 11 | 16.9 | 5 | 8.1 |
| PP + VOX | 40 | 60.1 | 33 | 46.9 |
| Other parties | 7 | 10.3 | 4 | 6.0 |
| Total seats | 65 | 65 | 65 | 65 |
In Castile and León, the PP captured two more seats and was finalising a new coalition with Vox, which added one seat in the region’s parliament to its tally in 2022 (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Results of main parties in Castile and León’s elections, seats and % of votes
| 2026 | 2022 | |||
| Seats | % of votes | Seats | % of votes | |
| Popular Party | 33 | 35.5 | 31 | 31.4 |
| Socialists | 30 | 30.7 | 28 | 30.0 |
| PP + Socialists | 63 | 66.2 | 58 | 61.4 |
| VOX | 14 | 18.9 | 13 | 17.6 |
| PP + VOX | 47 | 54.4 | 44 | 49.0 |
| Other parties | 5 | 5.9 | 9 | 16.4 |
| Total seats | 82 (1) | 82 (1) | 81 | 81 |
The PP lost two seats in Aragón, where a snap election was also held for the same reason as in Extremadura (see Figure 3). The party struck a new deal with VOX.
Figure 3. Results of main parties in Aragón’s elections, seats and % of votes
| 2026 | 2023 | |||
| Seats | % of votes | Seats | % of votes | |
| Popular Party | 26 | 34.2 | 28 | 36.5 |
| Socialists | 18 | 24.4 | 23 | 29.5 |
| PP + Socialists | 44 | 58.6 | 51 | 65.0 |
| Vox | 14 | 17.9 | 7 | 11.2 |
| PP + VOX | 40 | 52.1 | 35 | 47.7 |
| Other parties | 9 | 16.2 | 9 | 19.1 |
| Total seats | 67 | 67 | 67 | 67 |
Lastly, in Andalusia, the most populous region and larger than the combined territory of Belgium and the Netherlands, the PP is still the main party, but it lost five seats and thus its absolute majority in the 109-seat parliament. It will have to govern with the direct or indirect support of VOX unless it can strike a deal with another party (see Figure 1). The Socialists, who ruled the region between 1978 and 2019, suffered their worst result ever in what was their fiefdom. They secured 22.7% of the vote, about half that in the 2000s. Vox is pushing its ‘national priority’ policy as part of any deal with the PP.
Figure 4. Results of main parties in Andalusia’s elections, seats and % of votes
| 2026 | 2022 | |||
| Seats | % of votes | Seats | % of votes | |
| Popular Party | 53 | 41.6 | 58 | 43.1 |
| Socialists | 28 | 22.7 | 30 | 24.1 |
| PP + Socialists | 81 | 64.3 | 88 | 67.2 |
| VOX | 15 | 13.8 | 14 | 13.5 |
| PP + VOX | 68 | 55.4 | 72 | 56.6 |
| Other parties | 13 | 15.9 | 7 | 12.3 |
| Total seats | 109 | 109 | 109 | 109 |
The rightward shift was most evident in Extremadura where the combined votes of the PP and VOX (60.1%) was 13.2 percentage points higher, followed by Castille-León (54.4%, +5.5 pp) and Aragón (52.1%, +4.4 pp). The only exception was in Andalusia (55.4%, -2.2 pp), the last test before the next general election. VOX is making inroads into PP voters, as well as young adults voting for the first time.
Regional parties (ie, those that do not field candidates throughout Spain) are gaining importance. The Chunta Aragonesa won six seats, three more, and the left-wing Adelante Andalucía eight (+6), snatching votes from the Socialists.
Support for the left, based on the combined votes of the Socialists and the hard-left Sumar and its allies, which form the central government, dropped in all four elections: in Extremadura from 45.9% of the votes to 36%; in Castille-León from 35.1% to 32.9%; in Aragón from 32.4% to 27.2%; and in Andalusia from 31.8% to 29%.
While the PP is convinced the results put it clearly on the path to power at the central government level, the Socialists are much more cautious in extrapolating the outcome of these four regional elections. They point out, for example, that they won 577,000 more votes in Andalusia in the July 2023 general election than in the June 2022 regional election.
Polls for a general election also put the PP, VOX and Se Acabó la Fiesta (SALF), another hard-right party founded in 2024, well ahead of the Socialists, Sumar and Podemos (which split from Sumar and went solo in December 2023) by 14 pp (51% vs 37%). If this proves to be the case at the next general election, the PP and VOX between them would win 190 of Congress’s 350 seats, well above the 176 needed to form a government and the 170 they currently have, according to the latest polls. Engulfed by various corruption scandals affecting the Socialists and his family, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is resisting the call for an early election.
The Socialists and Sumar won 153 seats in the 2023 election and managed to cobble together a coalition government which relies on the parliamentary support of two Catalan and two Basque parties, one Galician and Podemos.
Polls can be volatile, while the regions with the strongest nationalist presence (the Basque Country, Catalonia, where the Socialists are also strong, and Galicia) are not due to hold elections this year, and so the sentiment there cannot be taken into account when seeking to predict the outcome of the next general election. What does seem certain is the advance of VOX. Whether it becomes the PP’s kingmaker remains to be seen.
