Retired, to the PSOE; the military, Vox, and housewives, the PP: the profile of voters in Spain

The night of 23-J became a party for some and a bit long for others. Despite the fact that most polls endorsed a comfortable majority of investiture between PP and Vox, Pedro Sánchez rose from his ashes and improved his brand enough to now fight for governance if he achieves the approval of Junts. The vote of the undecided was one of the great obsessions during the campaign of the four great political forces that, however, also affected their particular niche of voters, profiles that usually repeat the voting pattern based on their age, sex, occupation or economic situation. The guts of the last CIS that José Félix Tezanos carried out in the last days of the campaign confirm, for example, that the PSOE is the preferred force among retirees and pensioners; that male support for Vox doubles that of females, or that Sumar finds its majority voting niche among students.

The PP was the force with the most votes on election night, although the 137 deputies that Feijóo finally obtained were insufficient to tie up Moncloa hand in hand with Vox. The aforementioned study, which is based on field work of 27,000 interviews carried out between July 13 and 22 —the day of reflection— and which deals with the direct intention to vote, reveals that the PP maintained the majority percentages of ballots in the niche of leadership and managerial positions (38.5%), followed closely by unpaid domestic workers (34.2%).

The professional sectors that planned to vote for the PP on 23-J do not come into conflict with the other great party of the right-wing bloc. Vox's majority niche is that of the military and police: 35% of those interviewed in this area bet on Santiago Abascal's party, above PP (29.2%) and PSOE (11.6%). Ultra-conservative training also has a great impact among workers in the primary sector, such as farmers and ranchers.. Almost 25% of those surveyed belonging to this sector also opted mainly for Vox, slightly surpassing the PP mark (23.8%). Socialists have a moderate incidence among these professionals (15.5%), while in the case of Sumar it barely reaches 9%..

The rural vote was one of the great battles of the electoral campaign. And the dispute was especially accentuated between PP and Vox. Feijóo turned the defense of emptied Spain into an obsession in the weeks leading up to the elections, with multiple visits to the provinces that distributed fewer seats to the Congress of Deputies and in which Abascal had gained a powerful niche of voters in previous appointments. with the ballot box. The objective was to appeal to the useful vote to wrest the flag of the field from Vox and, incidentally, the 'third seat' in key squares.

With more than nine million votes at stake, both PSOE and PP fought during the campaign for the vote of the older population, with the revaluation of pensions as a thrown weapon between Sánchez and Feijóo. But this battle, at least according to the data provided by the latest CIS, is still being won by the socialists. The highest percentage of intention to vote among retirees and pensioners was taken by the PSOE (36.6%), almost 10 points above the PP (27.1%). These data confirm that the bipartisanship continues to be the main option of the older population when the polls open, while the forces with more recent implantation, such as Sumar and Vox, fit better among the younger electorate.

In the case of Yolanda Díaz, the distribution of ballots by occupation is more heterogeneous. The vote for Sumar is concentrated especially among professionals, scientists and intellectuals (19.4%); mid-level technical profiles (18.3%) and students (16%). In the case of the PP, that percentage drops to 18%, followed by Sumar (15.2%) and Vox (11%)..

Social classes and ages

There are also no surprises in the distribution of votes by social class. The two great forces of the block on the left concentrated the bulk of the intention to vote for the workers and the lower-poor class, while the PP remains strong in the highest strata. It is important to underline at this point how the vote for Vox transcends social class and has similar records among the upper economic spheres (10.9%) and the lower classes (10.3%).

Just the opposite happens to those of Abascal when the distribution of votes based on age is addressed. The greatest success for Vox is among the youngest sector of the population (18 to 24 years old), where they achieve the support of 16.7% of voters and remain less than one point behind the PP (17.5%). This is how the commitment of the ultra-conservative formation to social networks consumed by that generation Z, such as TikTok, is understood.. From that age, their support gradually falls, and in the older generations they are the option with the least votes among the four major parties, with 5.7% among voters between 65 and 74 years of age and 3.6% among those over 75.

The most voted among the young population are the socialists (27.1%), and it is striking that in this sector they have substantially better data than in the three immediately older cohorts (25 to 34 years, 35 to 44 years and 45 to 54 years ). It is early and there is no qualitative analysis, but it is not by chance that Sánchez was involved during the campaign in media consumed by this generation. The best example is the La pija y la quinqui podcast, which was broadcast on the Sunday before the elections, but also the embrace of the Perro Sanxe meme. Starting this week, T-shirts and badges with the slogan and its female version, inaugurated by the president's wife, Begoña Gómez, at the closing of the socialist campaign in Getafe, are being sold on the PSOE website.

Despite this good data among the youth sector, the best numbers for the PSOE are at the top of the population pyramid, where they get more than two thirds of the vote. It must be borne in mind that the Tezanos CIS usually has a sample that overestimates the left, according to public opinion experts, which explains why the PSOE surpasses the PP in voting intentions and voting by mail, which is what it measures this poll.

Sumar manages to be the first force among voters between 25 and 34 years old, the cohort between generation Z and the youngest millennials. In this section, the PSOE prevails by half a point (22.5% compared to 22% of the Socialists) and the Minister of Labor is the second favorite as president only behind Sánchez and ahead of Feijóo. The good data from Vox among the youngest relegates Yolanda Díaz's men to the fourth force in that section, but then they maintain good numbers in the following cohorts, always above 10% except in the oldest section (5.8% among those over 75).

In these elections, according to this CIS study, the trends on gender bias have been maintained, although with nuances. In the PP, there is almost a balance between women and men with a slight advantage for them (25.4% compared to 24% of them). The PSOE manages to prevail among men over the PP by six tenths, but the distance at which female voters are placed is very striking, with 31.2%. The gap between the female and male vote among the Socialists is 6.6 percentage points, which gives clues to the success of the brand of the fist and the rose among women.

This good data prevents Sumar from being able to end this gap, which was very accentuated in United We Can, despite the fact that it was one of the keys for the left-wing coalition to exceed the data of the space that preceded it.. Sumar continues to be a party with better numbers among men (14%) than among women (12.9%), despite the fact that its candidate was a woman. In any case, the most accentuated gender gap continues to be that of Vox, since it achieves 13.2% of men and only 5.9% of women.