The decision to delay the publication of the first official results of the Andalusian elections this Sunday until 8:43 PM has inevitably revived the memory of the 2018 regional elections, when several incidents in polling stations ended up altering the course of election night and further delaying the dissemination of official results.
The Electoral Board announced this May 17 that the first official data could not be released at 8:00 PM, as is customary, due to delays recorded during the day in several polling stations in Seville, Malaga, and El Puerto de Santa María. The postponement finally set will be 43 minutes.
The precedent of 2018: polling stations open until 10:15 PM
In those regional elections, various problems in the constitution of electoral boards had already caused delays from early in the morning in some polling stations. However, the main incident occurred in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), where the absence of Equo ballots in all polling stations forced a temporary suspension of voting.
The Electoral Board then agreed to extend voting hours until 10:15 PM in that municipality to guarantee the voting rights of the affected voters. As a consequence, the official count could not begin until the definitive closure of the last Andalusian polling station.
That delay completely altered the usual dynamics of election night and delayed the dissemination of official results for hours in elections that ended up having a strong political impact, by opening the door to the first coalition government between PP and Ciudadanos with the support of VOX after decades of socialist hegemony in Andalusia.
Isolated delays versus structural incidents
The situation this Sunday presents relevant differences compared to 2018. This time, the announced delay is limited to 43 minutes and responds, according to electoral authorities, to isolated incidents recorded during the day in several polling stations.
Nevertheless, the memory of 2018 has quickly reappeared in the political and media debate due to the symbolism of any alteration in the publication of the count in particularly polarized Andalusian elections with high expectations about possible subsequent pacts.
Electoral legislation establishes that polling stations that have suffered interruptions or delays may extend their voting hours for the time equivalent to that lost, which obliges the official dissemination of results to be postponed until the definitive closure of all affected polling stations.
Bad memory for the PSOE
The precedent of that delay in 2018 does not bring good memories to the PSOE as their historic dominance in the community was broken at that time and a new political era was opened marked by the decisive entry of VOX into regional institutions: the PSOE-A won the elections, but obtained its worst result in history in Andalusia; VOX entered the Andalusian Parliament for the first time with 12 seats, becoming the great surprise of the night; the sum of PP-A, Ciudadanos and VOX reached an absolute majority (59 deputies), which allowed the PSOE to be removed from the Junta after almost 37 years; Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla was invested president of the Junta thanks to an agreement between PP and Ciudadanos with parliamentary support from VOX. At that time, turnout fell to around 58.6%, one of the lowest recorded in Andalusian regional elections.