Spain elects a new Congress:Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular loses a third of its seats , elects 123; Podemos 69 and Ciudadanos 40 members; Socialists 90 members.

With 99% of the votes counted in the Spanish election the results show a divided Congress with a much weakened centre right party having lost about a third of its seats. Mariano Rajoy the incumbent Prime Minister will have to find coalition parties to support his government or he will be replaced by a broad coalition of the centre right and left parties including the radical populist party Podemos led by the charismatic Pablo Inglesias and the new populist party of the centre right, Ciudadanos led by Albert Rivera. The socialist party led by Pedro Sanchez lost 20 of its seats and ended up with 90 seats. Six other smaller parties captured a total of 28 seats. The vote split was as follows: Rajoy’s PP 28% 7.22 million votes; Sanchez’s PSOE 22% 5.5 million votes; Inglesias’ PODEMOS 20.6% 5.19 million votes; Rivera’s Ciudadanos party 3.56 million votes 14.6%.Spain continues to have the second highest unemployment rate in Europe after Greece and widespread underemployment. This has led to great dissatisfaction with the Rajoy government.It will be very interesting to see in the coming weeks what sort of government emerges in Spain and to what extent it will break with policies of austerity that have led the country to this crisis.

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About haroldchorneyeconomist

I am Professor of political economy at Concordia university in Montréal, Québec, Canada. I received my B.A.Hons (econ.&poli sci) from the University of Manitoba. I also completed my M.A. degree in economics there. Went on to spend two years at the London School of Economics as a Ph.D. student in economics and then completed my Ph.D. in political economy at the University of Toronto. Was named a John W.Dafoe fellow, a CMHC fellow and a Canada Council fellow. I also was named a Woodrow Wilson fellow in 1968 after completing my first class honours undergraduate degree. Worked as an economist in the area of education, labour economics and as the senior economist with the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation for the Government of Manitoba from 1972 to 1978. I also have worked as an economic consultant for MDT socio-economic consultants and have been consulted on urban planning, health policy, linguistic duality and public sector finance questions by the governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan,the cities of Regina and Saskatoon, Ontario and the Federal government of Canada. I have also been consulted by senior leaders of the British Labour party, MPs from the Progressive Conservative party, the Liberal party and the New Democrats on economic policy questions. Members of the Government of France under the Presidency of Francois Mitterand discussed my work on public sector deficits. I have also run for elected office at the municipal level. I first began to write about quantitative easing as a useful policy option during the early 1980s.
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