Spanish socialists win the election
I'm writing this at just after 1 a.m. on Monday morning, and with nearly all the votes from yesterday's general election counted, we now know that the Spanish Socialist party leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will continue as prime minister for another four years.
The prediction is that he will end up with 169 seats in the 350-seat lower house of parliament, that's five more than he had in the last parliament, but still not an overall majority. The main opposition party, the Partido Popular, will have 154, which is up six. The big losers are the fringe leftist party, the United Left, which lost three seats, and the left-wing Catalan nationalist party, which lost five.
What does it mean? Well, it means that the socialists' victory four years ago was not just the result of popular anger over the then government's handling of the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings. It also means that, although the Spanish economy is not in great shape, voters seem to think that Mr Zapatero is best placed to see them through the next few difficult months and years.
And it also means, I think, that the Partido Popular's lacklustre leader, Mariano Rajoy, will be bowing out soon. He failed to impress during the much-watched TV election debates, and he has now lost two consecutive general elections. Winning a few more seats may not be enough to save him.
