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On Sunday 21, elections will be held in Extremadura called in advance by the president of the region, the popular María Guardiola, who seeks to remain in power. The latest polls place the PP as the first force, with around 41 or 42% of the votes, followed by the PSOE (32%), Vox (14%) and Unidas por Extremadura (8%), the coalition with Podemos and IU. In other words, the central result is that the PP has around 29 seats, does not reach the majority of 33 seats and must seek an agreement with another party, which will probably be Vox.
All polls anticipate a movement to the right of the region. In the 2023 regional elections, the right-wing group obtained 48% of the votes – with the PP, Vox and the remains of the Cs – which constitutes a historic record in Extremadura. Then this trend continued: in the legislative elections of 2023, the right obtained 51% of the votes there, and a year later, in the European elections of 2024, it obtained almost 55%, adding the PP (41.4%), Vox (10%) and Se Acabó la Fiesta (3.4%).
The movement to the right is even observed in the estimates of the CEI, which has overestimated the left since 2018. In its pre-election survey, published a few days ago, the CEI places the sum of the PP and Vox at nearly 56% of the votes. Furthermore, the CIS stands out from the rest of the polls because it sees Vox very strongly (17.3% of the votes) and less the PP (38.5%). To contrast the two trends, I made my own vote estimate with the raw IEC data. My calculations maintain the trend to the right (56% of votes for the PP-Vox sum) and soften the strength of Vox, even if they keep the ultra party above what the other polls say: around 15%.
The explanation of these two phenomena, the strength of the right and that of Vox, is found in the CEI transfer matrix: how do Extremadurans who voted for each party in the 2023 general elections declare that they will vote now? See.
Vox’s good result can be explained by those surveyed who did not vote in 2023 and who now say they will: among them, the far-right party is the leading force.
But the most shocking fact lies in the right turn. Look at the PSOE column: 9% of socialist voters in the 2023 legislative elections say they will now vote for the PP. And up to 3% assure that they will do it for Vox. Furthermore, to amplify this movement, CIS data indicates that the right-wing parties, PP and Vox, have fewer undecided voters than their rivals.
In summary, in addition to deciding the government of Extremadura, the recount on the 21st will answer two important questions at the national level. First: is the right-wing movement strong enough to bring it to the 55 or 56% predicted by the polls? This would be a historic jump for the region, seven points from 48% in 2023. And second: is Vox’s growth relative to the PP as great as the data suggests or is it a mirage? In two weeks we will know.
Other news random
🔥 1. Better AI for programming
With Claude Opus 4.5, the new model from Anthropic, I felt a new leap forward in artificial intelligence. I gave him the code for a previous election prediction and he helped me prepare the analysis you just read.
How does this help me? He read my code and understood that we were now dealing with Extremadura; cleaned up new data, adjusted matches, thresholds, colors, etc. ; he made tricky grafts with loose scripts (“do something like that”); I detected one of my errors; and then we checked together that everything was working. Programming with Claude’s help makes me faster, but also increases the quality of the final product: I added an additional analysis which was very simple with his help (a second estimate with the CIS) and I checked the historical graph with two sources.
It’s amazing to have tools that improve like this. Every new update is a gift. Like in this scene from The Matrix: “I already know kung fu,” Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini seem to say. Internet and cell phones were slower, they improved over a decade, steadily, but you didn’t feel it every three months.
How much productivity have I gained from AI? I can’t measure it exactly. And it’s good to be skeptical about how users “feel.” But the gain is obvious.
The challenge of the next decade is to learn. Discover the best way to work with artificial intelligence, to get the most out of it and lose the least along the way. It’s the same dilemma that the Internet brought (learn what you want and don’t copy Wikipedia’s work), then the mobile phone (read wherever you want and don’t spend the afternoon looking at it! reels!). Many professionals risk their careers in this balance. This is not a competition where us “established” people have an advantage, but rather the young, the natives, the ChatGPT generation will have it. It was always like that and that’s okay.
🧠 2. Are teenage suicides increasing?
This week, Borja Andrino and Montse Hidalgo analyzed the data on this very delicate issue. The result is nuanced. On the one hand, WHO data shows a worrying increase in suicides among girls aged 15 to 19. At the same time, Spain maintains teenage suicide rates among the lowest in Europe (half those of France or the United Kingdom; five times lower than those of the United States). Additionally, suicide continues to be more common among men, particularly older men.
🐷 3. Spain, a threatened pork power
The epidemic of African swine fever detected in wild boars in Collserola has pushed around twenty countries to close their borders to Spanish pigs. The epidemic is putting billions of euros of exports at risk for an essential activity.
Spain has become the fourth country in the world with the most pigs – 33 million – and the leading European exporter. Yolanda Clemente and Laura Delle Femmine They explain with eleven graphs the keys to a growing sector.
This is a delivery of the Kiko Llaneras newsletter, an exclusive newsletter for El País subscribers, with current data and explanations: sign up to receive it.
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