Elections in a state of boiling

During a very long and bitter night, that of April 9, 1992, I learned to distrust electoral polls. Which usually get it right, except when a society shows symptoms of deep boiling. That is to say, when the famous "liquid society" and in continuous mutation defined by Zygmunt Bauman passes into a completely unpredictable gaseous state. In the elections of November 29, one of these gas explosions could occur.

Let me tell you the little story of that long night. In 1992, the British Conservatives had been in power for 13 years. And they were torn apart by the European question. Margaret Thatcher had resigned in 1990. Her successor, John Major, seemed like a grey man without leadership capacity. All the polls, absolutely all of them, predicted that April 9 would result in a Parliament with a Labour majority or no majority for any party.

I was working then as a correspondent in London. The exit polls confirmed a small Labour majority. The first counts seemed to indicate rather that the Labour or the Conservatives would have to reach an agreement with the Liberal Democrats to form a government. I sent to El País a chronicle to that effect. It opened the front page of the first edition.

But, as the night progressed, an unexpected Conservative recovery became perceptible. (Finally, they achieved a majority of 21 seats, very slim for the British majoritarian system.) I wrote a new chronicle. To my misfortune, the duty editor-in-chief had left, the director was unreachable (mobile phones did not exist yet), and the printing press manager said that, without an order from some authority, the front page would not be changed.

The next day we looked ridiculous. I think the board of directors demanded my dismissal and the director, Jesús Ceberio, saved me.

What had happened in those elections? Several things: that Neil Kinnock's Labour had sinned by triumphalism and had shifted to the left to satisfy the membership, that no one had been able to face the European question and that, faced with doubt and subjected to the torturing message that told them they were facing, without it being true, a matter of life and death, the voters (the turnout was much higher than expected) preferred to remain reluctantly with John Major's ambiguity.

Five years later, with the Tories in the midst of an internal war over Europe, Tony Blair's New Labour, a sweetened version of conservatism, obtained an overwhelming majority.

The Spanish elections in November are also among those fought on shifting sands. A socialist victory seems very, very unlikely. But this will depend on the mobilization of their voters, the Catalan state of mind (in 2023 Catalonia kept Pedro Sánchez in power), and the percentage of tactical voting, given the poor expectations of the parties to the left of the PSOE.

A victory for the Popular Party seems very, very likely. But this will depend on how far the Vox partners go. If the far-right were to approach 20% of the votes, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's success would have a quite bitter taste and, probably, a turbulent period would begin.

Elections often turn out to be volatile when the main proposals are negative. Like now. What the right proposes is to end "Sanchismo," defined as a “corrupt social-communist dictatorship” by its most conspicuous leaders. What Pedro Sánchez proposes is to stop the far-right. Both fronts resort to emotional matters (the late tenant Maricarmen, the invasion of Ceuta), street brawls (we will see unusual things), and insults. A society already tense enough will be subjected to tremendous discharges of tension. How to reach the boiling point?

All the factors with the potential to distort the polls are there. We will hear flagrant lies. For the first time, it seems, the judicial cases cornering the government will not be suspended during the campaign. And no one is capable of knowing to what level tacticalism (the lukewarm tactical vote) and visceral reactions (the punishment vote that prioritizes the pleasure of annoying the rival over any kind of political reasoning) will reach.

I don't know what will happen. But I am quite convinced that on the night of November 29th, we will be left speechless.