Like most cities in Extremadura and Andalusia, Mérida is both more prosperous and less left-wing than the surrounding countryside. But it’s not as well-off as the state’s larger two cities, Badajoz and Cáceres, and doesn’t lean anywhere as much to the right. Just like Extremadura as a whole, Mérida has in fact become the definition of electoral swing territory.

Left and right-wing parties evenly matched in Mérida

For most of the past 25 years, the socialist party PSOE and the conservative Partido Popular (PP) have alternated as top choice of the city’s voters, and left and right have matched each other ever more closely.

But with a population that’s younger than that of the surrounding countryside, Mérida voters have swung further away from the long-dominant socialist and conservative parties to newcomer parties, in particular the liberal-conservative Ciudadanos (Cs).

The rise and fall of the PP in Mérida

In last month’s elections, PSOE rebounded modestly from earlier defeats while Ciudadanos and the far-right Vox benefited handily from the collapse of the PP vote. Overall, the right-wing block of PP, Cs and Vox ever so slightly increased a narrow advantage.

The PP lost more, and Vox and Cs won more in Mérida than elsewhere

In the 1980s the left got over 60% of the vote in Extremadura, and in Mérida too. But the province has trended towards the median since.

The 2016 elections marked the first time since 1979 that left-wing parties got a smaller share of the vote here than nationally, and that gap increased last month as the left gained ground nationwide but stayed level here. The points gained by PSOE were lost by Podemos, and Extremadura has none of the left-of-center nationalist and regionalist forces that add to the left’s score in Catalonia, the Basque Country or Galicia.

Mérida, the happy medium?

It’s a paradox: as rural region, Extremadura is drifting gradually right compared to the country overall. But within the region it’s the cities that lean right and the villages left — and little about that seems to be changing.

Extremadura: left-wing villages, right-wing cities

PSOE paints the town red again

Mérida was never marked by the bourgeois politics that appear to characterize Cáceres, 70 kilometres north. When Extremadura was a socialist stronghold, so was Mérida. Both gave the PSOE absolute majorities of their vote in the 1980s, but those majorities started eroding sooner and faster in Mérida.

The PSOE vote surged once more under Zapatero, who seemed particularly popular with Mérida voters. Pedro Sánchez is no Zapatero and has made more of an impact elsewhere in Spain, but they like him okay. While the Socialists don’t maintain the commanding leads here they enjoy in many of Extremadura’s villages, PSOE still does significantly better than nationally.

Halting the decline? PSOE results in Spain, Extremadura and Mérida

Thanks to the implosion of the PP, last month’s modest gains meant that PSOE topped the vote in all but five of the city’s 41 census sections, which yields the very red map at the top of this blog post. Only in the heart of downtown Mérida does the PP still prevail, while Cs got to take first place in two newly built neighbourhoods on the edge of town.