Socialists take big lead in Spain election
The ruling party appears to be trouncing the right-wing Popular Party. Voter turnout is high.
MADRID — Spain's ruling Socialist Workers Party jumped to a significant lead over the conservative Popular Party in an acrimonious national election today, partial returns showed.
With nearly half of the vote counted, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the Socialists appeared well on their way to winning a second term in government. Flag-waving Socialist activists crowded outside party headquarters in Madrid in celebration, and party Secretary Jose Blanco went on national television to claim victory.
But the Socialists' early hopes of securing an absolute majority in the parliament were fading as the margin narrowed between their votes and those of the Popular Party. A close result will complicate the ability of the victorious party to govern.
Turnout was high in an election that reflected deep divisions in a country grappling with a new economic slump and resurgent political violence. Election officials said about 74% of the 35 million eligible voters cast ballots, just 1 percentage point off the turnout in 2004, when terrorist attacks drove people, especially first-time voters, to the polls in near-record numbers.
One common theme ran among voters on both ends of the ideological spectrum interviewed after they cast their ballots. They said they wanted a more civil political atmosphere in which leaders worked to find compromise rather than attack one another endlessly -- the kind of tense discord that has characterized the last few years of government.
"I'd like to see a new legislature in which they don't go after each other like attack dogs," said Ignacio Fernandez, 42, a bespectacled college professor who voted for the Socialists in his funky working-class Madrid neighborhood of Lavapies.
"I voted for the lesser of two evils," said Francisco Alvarez, 66, a retired military officer voting in the upscale Salamanca neighborhood. "We've had political inertia that has ignored the real problems."
Perhaps more polarized than at any time in its recent history, the Spanish public faced a stark choice. A recent downturn in Spain's once-booming economy and worries about an enormous influx of immigrants were issues that dominated the campaign.
Zapatero and his party have used his four-year term to promote some of the most liberal social reforms in Europe. They pushed a more independent foreign policy after years of pro-U.S. government, moved to limit the influence of the Roman Catholic Church and expanded the rolls of immigrant labor.
