The Spanish Kick Out the Pro-War Party

I must admit to more than a little satisfaction at seeing the defeat of Spain's Popular Party in Sunday's elections. A government that supports a war against the wishes of the majority of its country's population does not deserve to remain in power. But what I find interesting about much of the mainstream press coverage is again another glaring example of bandwagon thinking, and a blatant attempt at manufacturing a sensational story.

Throughout the English speaking western press, the theories behind the Popular Party's loss to the Socialists are focused on the skewing effects of the terrorist bombing last week. The press, however, is also making other assumptions taken as fact.

The first assumption is that the Popular Party was guaranteed to win before the Madrid bombing. Presumably the reporting of a Popular Party victory is based on pre-election polling. But the slant of reporting in most of the articles and coverage I've seen neither emphasizes the unreliability of polls, nor the fact that earlier press coverage predicted a very close election, and likely a minority government. For an example of the kind of slant I'm talking about, here is a snippet of an article from the Washington Post:

"While opinion polls taken before the attacks had given Aznar's Popular Party a comfortable lead, voters overwhelmingly endorsed candidates from the opposition Socialist Party, whose leader, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has promised to immediately withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq, redirect Spain's foreign policy away from the United States and restore good relations with such European allies as France and Germany that had opposed the Iraq war."

Note the casual insertion of assumption in the initial sentence above suggesting the Popular party had a comfortable lead, something not born out in pre-bombing coverage of the Spanish election. A minority government is not a "comfortable lead".

The second major assumption appearing in much of the mainstream press coverage is that the bombing attacks were the deciding factor in the defeat of the Popular Party. While a stronger argument can be made for this assumption, the result of the election only partially supports it.

Again if you look to the quote above, the Washington Post article suggests that "voters overwhelmingly endorsed candidates from the opposition Socialist Party". This is clearly overstating the case. The Socialists will have to form a minority government. There was no overwhelming endorsement.

At best it can be argued that the bombing in Madrid convinced enough undecided voters to vote Socialist in the face of the Popular Party's initial mishandling of the bombing aftermath. By mishandling I'm referring to the attempts by the Popular Party to immediately blame the Basque separatist organization ETA for the bombing, even before an investigation had started. Many Spanish voters apparently saw this move by the Popular Party as an attempt to place blame on an old enemy, instead of a new one gained by Spanish support of the war in Iraq.

What I find interesting about the effect the Madrid bombing had on the election, is that it appeared to get the undecided to actually vote, instead of sit-out the election. It also seems to have convinced enough swing voters (voters with no ideological loyalties), to vote Socialist.

To suggest, however, that the bombing is responsible for the Socialist victory is misleading, and very poor journalism. The election was already going to be close. The Popular Party mishandling of the aftermath of the bombing appears to be the real culprit. The behaviour of the ruling party reminded Spanish voters of the mentality of those who took Spain into the Iraq War, and the reasons many of them opposed it. To sum up that mentality: it is one of total self interest; where the will to power is allowed by any means, including the exploitation of terrorist murder, and where the expression of conscience is only important for the sake of appearance.

It takes effort to explain complexity. It is far simpler and far more sensational for lazy journalists merely blame the Madrid bombing for a massive turn around in election results. The truth is that there was no massive turn to the election. The truth is that a small slice of the Spanish population decided to use their franchise to vote with their conscience.