Many people are surprised when they see that in all surveys –this being something surveys do agree on– the governing PP party systematically comes out as the most rejected party, and president Mariano Rajoy as the most detested party leader. However, and this is where the surprise comes from, PP remains ahead in voting intentions, with margins that vary according to the circumstances, the skill of the pollsters and the media organisation publishing the result, but first regardless.
I've been asked many times: "How is this possible?". How can a party simultaneously have the highest rates of societal rejection and the highest voting intention figures, and maintain this for years? How can a leader receive the most overwhelmingly negative appraisals and win all elections that they're a candidate in? Are the surveys lying or those surveyed?
Actually, nobody is lying. The combination of both factors, a strong social rejection and a high voting intention, is unusual, but it can occur in certain circumstances. Without wanting to establish a parallelism that would be erroneous, something like this happened with Trump.
In the 2016 elections, PP got 7.9 million votes. 21% of adults supported them, that's one of every five people with the right to vote. With this, Rajoy had enough to be the main political force in the country and to form a minority, but reasonably stable, government.
If we divide the Spanish population into two groups: on one side the 21% that voted for PP and on the other side the rest, the first thing that jumps out at us is the sharp difference between the two worlds, both in terms of their social composition and in their political opinions. It's as if they were from two different countries that have hardly anything to do with each other. We see some signs in the last barometer of the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas):
Asked to rate from 0 to 10 the probability that they would vote for each party, 81% of those who did not vote for PP in the last election gave a probability that they will do so in the future of less than 4. And 69% say directly that the probability they will is zero, which implies the maximum level of rejection. It's a calamity for a party that hopes to represent the majority of the society.
40% of PP voters believe that the Spanish government's management is good, for 52% it's mediocre and only 8% consider it bad
40% of PP voters believe that the Spanish government's management is good, for 52% it's mediocre and only 8% consider it bad. What does the rest of Spain say? For 3% the management is good, for 27% its mediocre and it's bad for 70%. A gaping difference in perception.
From 0 to 10, PP voters score Mariano Rajoy at 6.4; a better result than the other leaders obtain among their respective voters. However, the rest of the citizens hit him with a scandalous failing grade of 1.8 (Do you know how many zeros you need to get to get an average of 1.8?).
This is reproduced in terms of confidence. 67% of PP voters say they trust Rajoy, ahead of the 32% that don't trust him. Perhaps this seems low coming from his own base, but the figures for the opposition PSOE's leader, Pedro Sánchez, are worse: 54% of their voters trust him and 44% don't.
All of this suggests that PP and Rajoy do arouse a very high degree of rejection in well over half of the population that votes for other parties or that does not vote, but they maintain very consistent support in their own electoral space; a support that is slowly shrinking, but doing so at a geological pace, not compatible with the impatience of those that want nothing more or less than to remove them from power tomorrow morning.
In this way, we find ourselves in the curious situation that the party that gets the most votes in Spain is simultaneously the one that resembles Spain the least, and maintains its supremacy by strongly following the grain of the 20% that supports it. A 20% that, moreover, is strongly listing to one side and far from being a faithful portrait of society. Let's look at just two pieces of evidence:
45% of PP voters are more than 65 years old and it's the fourth party in voting intention in all age groups under 45
45% of PP voters are more than 65 years old. What's more, PP comes fourth in voting intention in all age groups under 45. If only people under that age voted, PP would be behind PSOE, Podemos and Ciudadanos in both votes and seats. That said, if only older citizens voted they would have a huge absolute majority. It is known that currently age is the factor that has the greatest impact on the voting behaviour of Spaniards, but in the case of PP it's taken to extremes.
The average ideological position of Spaniards, on a scale in which 1 is the far-left and 10 the far-right, is 4.58, so leaning slightly towards the centre-left. But PP voters sit around 6.9, and PP itself is lies at 7.5, already very close to positions close to the extreme right. The received wisdom is that in Spain elections are won in the centre (whatever that may be), but the truth is that here there is a party that has a number of wins now from one side of the field.
In short: yes, it is possible for a party and its leader to have the greatest social rejection and at the same time the highest voting intention. Everything depends on the fidelity of its base and on the capacity for reflection that the bases of other parties have.