I'm curious and confused with the Spain election. Several sources have said this election was an upset - caused by the bombings, or alternatively, caused by Aznar’s political response to it. But if more than 90% of Spaniards were against the Iraq War, why was the ruling party expected to win in the first place? Was the Iraq War simply not an important issue to the voters? I looked for polling which explained which issues were most important to the voters - both before the bombing and after - but couldn't find any. Talking Points Memo did just have a post that mentioned that the race was in a statistical dead heat the morning of the bombings. Some interesting analysis here describing some other issues that may have been important to the voters (Morocco): fistfulofeuros.net

Maybe the bombings didn’t cause people to switch votes, but rather motivated more people come to the polls. The last major election brought out 55% of eligible voters, while this one brought out 77% - a huge increase. Is it possible that the additional 22% of new voters simply turned the tide of the election? Perhaps these voters were already against Aznar and the bombings further motivated them to come out and vote? It would also be interesting to see if the bombings caused more people to vote that otherwise would not have.

This article explains that the Socialist Party was actually already ahead in the polls when the bombings occurred: Read here. or printed below:

March 17, 2004
Socialists were ahead before attacks
We keep reading that Aznar was heading for a clear victory in the Spanish elections before the bombings in Madrid and it is now widely being accepted that Al-Qaeda changed the course of the election.
But according to this report from UPI, the pre-election polls in Spain actually told a different story:
Independent polls carried out on Wednesday, the day before the bombings, showed the Socialists ahead with a slight majority.
A poll carried out by Noxa Consulting on Wednesday gave the Socialists less than a 2 percent margin, putting them, nevertheless, in the lead. A similar poll conducted Friday -- a day after the attacks, gave the Socialists an even greater lead.
And it is worth remembering that on Friday most people seemed convinced that the bombs were the work of ETA - which was supposed to benefit Aznar electorally.
The UPI report concludes:
The big difference -- and the clear reason of the Socialist victory -- was the nearly 3 million votes the Socialists added while Aznar's now not so Popular Party lost about 690,000 votes.
One also must take into consideration the millions of young protestors who took to the streets of Spanish cities in the days before the start of the Iraq war a year ago this week. They were expressing their opposition to Aznar's policy of allying Spain with the United States in the war effort. Then, many were too young to vote. This year they voted.
So rather than a vote for appeasment of terrorists as some right-wingers are claiming, it appears according to these poll results that the high Socialist vote was established before the bombing and was based on anti-war sentiment.
Now obviously I disagree with the stance taken on Iraq by the Spanish Socialists and I suspect like many others on the pro-war left had strange mixed feelings after Sunday's vote.
But these figures do seem to seriously undermine the slur that the Spaniards lost their bottle after the bombs and decided to cave into Bin Laden.

It's really tough to say. Millions marched on the streets of Spain before the war even began and Aznar continued to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Bush. It didn't make a damn bit of difference. Now, Blair and Aznar both chose to be involved with what, on the surface, seemed a losing political propostition. Yet, these guys are all skillfull politicians. Trusting that American power was certain to force some kind of outcome in the end, and that the war wasn't going to drag on forever or lead to largescale allied deaths probably made them both calculate that either popular opinion would come around, or that their bravery in helping to topple Hussein would give them a place in history. I don't think you could say that democracy in Spain is simply running its course.

I also think that Josh Marshall is overdoing it a bit. The election wasn't as close as he says it was. In fact, those who were prediciting that it would be close seem to have been those who put a great weight on the power of incumbancy.

But I also think that you are right in arguing that the bombings may not have caused the election's outcome. It seems that the Spanish government's unwillingness to frankly discuss the possibility that it was an Al Qaeda attack was the straw that broke the camel's back.

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