According to what El Español publishes this Saturday, socialist sources admit that the block formed by PP and Vox maintains a very high mobilization that they attribute, to a large extent, to the opposition to the president of the Government.
The diagnosis introduces a difficulty for the strategy that Moncloa has implemented after the dissolution of Congress. The socialists believe they have managed to shift the debate towards housing and social rights, but they acknowledge that this new agenda has not yet translated into a significant movement among the electoral blocks.
The question is how much the rejection of Sánchez really weighs in the decision to go vote. Electoral studies allow for an approximation of the phenomenon, although there is still no measurement that determines what percentage of the electorate plans to participate on 29-N mainly to prevent the socialist leader from continuing to govern.
The precedent of 23J: one in three PP voters wanted to punish the Government
The rejection of the Executive as an electoral motivation is not new. The Center for Sociological Research already found evidence of its importance after the general elections of July 23, 2023.
In its post-electoral study from September of that year, approximately one in three voters of the Popular Party pointed to punishing the Government or the desire for change as a reason to choose the candidacy of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The data was particularly significant because the PP had not managed to oust Sánchez from La Moncloa, despite winning the elections with 137 deputies.
In the overall electorate, 11.2% mentioned voting to punish the Government or the desire for change as the reason for their decision. Another 8% explained their vote by the will to oppose a party or political block.
These were responses collected after voting. They do not equate to a survey on future participation, but confirm that opposition to the Government was already a relevant component of electoral behavior.
The same study also found differences between the two main right-wing parties. Among PP voters, punishing the Executive stood out particularly, while among Vox voters, the electoral program was the most mentioned reason, at 26.1%.
This is an important distinction: the rejection of Sánchez can share space with ideological or programmatic motivations that do not disappear when the dominant issue of the campaign changes.
The 59.3% of Spaniards express anger towards Pedro Sánchez
The emotional dimension of that opposition appears in a more recent investigation.
The first Political Emotions Barometer of Spain, prepared by the Political Research Team of the University of Santiago de Compostela, places Pedro Sánchez among the leaders who provoke the most intense reactions.
According to the study, 59.3% of respondents express anger towards the president of the Government and 61.6% express concern.
The results, presented in September and obtained through 600 interviews conducted between June and July, also show the other side of that polarization: Sánchez is the leader who evokes the most pride, with 24%.
Feelings are not exclusive. The same person can experience concern and anger towards a politician, even when maintaining their electoral support.
In fact, the study detects negative emotions even among socialist voters.
That is why the percentage of anger cannot be interpreted as 59.3% of citizens willing to vote against Sánchez. What it does confirm is the intensity of the emotions generated by the president, one of the elements that researchers consider relevant to understanding political polarization.
The resistance of PP and Vox after the electoral advance
The first electoral test of Sánchez's new strategy has arrived with the 40dB survey, published on October 9 by El País and Cadena SER.
The poll, conducted on October 7 and 8, after the election call, places the PP at 31.9%, the PSOE at 28.1%, and Vox at 18.9%.
The socialists improve by seven tenths compared to the previous survey. But the PP also rises by three tenths and Vox gains another five.
The sum of PP and Vox reaches 50.8% of the estimated vote. Their central projection of seats is 198 deputies, 22 above the absolute majority.
The most relevant conclusion for the socialist strategy is that the growth of the PSOE has not been accompanied by an equivalent weakening of the right.
The Government has managed to place housing at the center of public discussion, but the first data on voting intention do not yet show a break in the balance between blocks.
Vox retains 92.8% of its voters and the PP retains 74.5%
The electoral strength of the right has another explanation in the transfer of votes.
According to the same survey from 40dB., Vox retains the voting intention of 92.8% of those who supported it in the general elections of 2023.
The PP retains 74.5% of its former voters and the PSOE 70.9%.
These figures measure declared voting loyalty, not effective participation, but they allow for identifying a difference between the electorates.
The party of Santiago Abascal presents an especially high cohesion. The PP also retains a broad majority of its voters, although it suffers a significant transfer towards Vox.
15.6% of those who voted for the PP in 2023 now declare their intention to choose Vox. The opposite movement, from Vox to the PP, does not reach 2%.
The change modifies the internal distribution of the right-wing bloc, but does not necessarily reduce its joint strength.
For the PSOE, the difficulty lies precisely in that the competition between Feijóo and Abascal can redistribute votes within the same space without substantially weakening their parliamentary sum.
The rejection of Sánchez does not alone explain the growth of Vox
The interpretation of anti-Sanchismo as the main mobilizing element needs precision.
The rejection of the president can function as a common motivation for voters of the PP and Vox, but it does not explain alone the differences between both parties.
Vox has built its own electoral offer around issues such as immigration, security, and certain cultural and social policies.
The data from 2023 already showed that programmatic component. And the current polls indicate that the growth of Vox comes from several simultaneous movements: it retains almost all of its previous voters, attracts voters from the PP, and gains support among people who did not go to vote in the previous general elections.
In the latest survey from 40dB., 12.7% of those who declare having abstained in 2023 now express intention to vote for Vox.
This percentage does not mean that 12.7% of all abstentionists will finally go to the polls to support Abascal. It does show that the party finds opportunities for growth also outside the electorate that participated three years ago.
The mobilization of former abstentionists does not belong exclusively to the left.
The paradox of Sánchez: he is the preferred for president, but the right dominates the polls
There is another piece of data that complicates the automatic identification between personal rejection and electoral behavior.
The 40dB survey also asks who the preferred candidate to preside the Government is.
Pedro Sánchez leads that ranking with 32.2% of the responses, compared to 29.3% for Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
However, the PP appears as the leading force in vote estimation and, along with Vox, exceeds the absolute majority in the central projection of seats.
The difference reveals that the preference for a candidate and the intention to vote for a party are not equivalent measures.
Sánchez retains significant personal support, but the forces that backed his investiture arrive at the campaign with a much lower estimated representation than they achieved in 2023.
Therefore, the electoral competition is not reduced to a comparison of popularity between Sánchez and Feijóo. The preferences of Vox voters, party loyalty, and the distribution of seats among all candidacies also come into play.
The mobilization for housing also does not guarantee votes for the left
The socialist strategy is based on one idea: turning the housing crisis into the central issue of the campaign can activate discontented or distant progressive voters from the polls.
But the relationship between social protest and voting is not automatic.
The mobilizations for housing bring together citizens with different economic situations, ideological preferences, and electoral behaviors.
The data from the 40dB survey show that the PSOE slightly improves after the electoral advance, but so do the PP and Vox. Sumar and Podemos, on the other hand, decline compared to the previous measurement.
It is a result that forces a distinction between social mobilization and electoral performance.
That concern for housing increases does not determine which party will receive those votes. A voter may hold the Government responsible for the evolution of prices, the regional or municipal administrations for their policies, or the entire political system.
In that scenario, a campaign focused on housing can benefit different forces for different reasons.
The other rejection: opposition to Vox also mobilizes
Anti-Sanchismo is not the only negative emotion capable of intervening in an election.
The Political Emotions Barometer from the University of Santiago shows that Santiago Abascal is the leader who evokes the most fear among the four analyzed leaders, with 43% of respondents.
Affective polarization works in different directions.
A study by the Murcian Center for Public Opinion Studies, CEMOP, detected that affective polarization had increased by 30.6% between 2021 and 2024. The research attributed a good part of the increase recorded between 2023 and 2024 to the greater rejection of socialist voters towards the Popular Party.
This means that the politics of rejection is not an exclusive phenomenon of the right.
In 2023, the fear of a government of PP and Vox was part of the electoral mobilization of the left during the last weeks of the campaign.
The unknown of 29-N is how those two opposing forces will combine: those who want Sánchez to leave the government and those who want to prevent a parliamentary majority of PP and Vox.
The PSOE acknowledges that changing the agenda does not yet change the votes
The reflection of the socialist leaders collected by Fernando Garea in El Español fits with that difficulty.
According to the information published this Saturday, the PSOE believes it has regained political initiative after the dissolution of Congress and has managed to place housing in a debate area that it judges more favorable.
But its sources also admit that the polls continue to show a solid majority for PP and Vox and that the rejection of the president keeps a part of that electorate very mobilized.
The party thus faces two different electoral objectives. It needs to recover progressive votes and, at the same time, reduce the advantage of the opposing bloc.
The available data do not allow establishing how much of the vote for PP and Vox on November 29 will primarily respond to personal rejection of Sánchez, how much to the assessment of his management, and how much to the proposals of each party.
They do allow identifying three precedents: in 2023, the punishment of the government was already a prominent motivation among PP voters; in 2026, Sánchez continues to provoke intense negative emotions; and the first poll after the electoral advance maintains a high vote fidelity in the right bloc.
The next check will be whether the following polls detect changes in the expected participation, the transfer of votes between blocs, and the support for progressive forces after the mobilizations for housing.