Lorraine Williamson
With five days to go until Aragón votes on Sunday, 8 February, the regional campaign has narrowed to one urgent question: who holds the over-65s, and can that bloc decide not just the winner, but who finishes second.
For the PSOE, the stakes are unusually stark. New campaign reporting suggests the party is concentrating heavily on pensioners to stop Vox overtaking it for second place, as polling points to a weakened socialist vote and a stronger far-right performance than in 2023.
The electorate is sizeable and older than many outsiders assume. Spain’s national statistics office says 1,036,321 people are eligible to vote in the Aragón regional election.
Why pensioners have become the centre of gravity
Pensioners are not a niche group in Aragón. El País reports that voters aged over 65 make up more than 31% of the electoral roll, and both the PP and PSOE rely on this demographic far more than their younger support.
That matters because the contest is less about whether the PP wins and more about the shape of the parliament it will inherit. Recent polling and coverage consistently point to the PP finishing first under Jorge Azcón, but falling short of an outright majority, leaving Vox as the likely kingmaker again.
For Pilar Alegría, the socialist candidate, the pitch has been tightly focused: pensions and “security” in everyday life. She has used the government’s pension revaluation as a dividing line, arguing that the parties who brought down the wider “social shield” decree were voting against pensioners’ interests.
The wider backdrop is a national mood that feels harsher on incumbents. In Aragón, that translates into a familiar pattern: disillusioned centre-left voters stay at home, while a motivated right consolidates, with Vox picking up protest energy.
What polls suggest about Sunday’s map
Most surveys published during the final stretch point in the same direction: PP first, PSOE down, Vox up, and the arithmetic likely requiring a pact.
Heraldo de Aragón, summarising its own polling, reports Vox could climb into the 12–13 seat range, with the PSOE at risk of a historically low result, and the PP still needing support to govern.
A separate GAD3 barometer for Hoy Aragón also points to the PP leading with the PSOE second and Vox close behind, reinforcing the idea that the second-place fight could tighten late in the week.
The campaign, in other words, is now two races running at once: Azcón trying to win cleanly and decisively, and Alegría trying to prevent the psychological blow of being pushed into third.
A quiet election-day change: Aragón brings in AI to check the count
There is another detail worth watching on Sunday night. Aragón’s government says it will use artificial intelligence for the first time to cross-check potential errors in polling-station actas.
The system will compare digitised figures against photographs of the official actas, flag discrepancies, and send them to authorised staff for review. Officials say the AI does not “decide” results; it simply highlights possible recording errors. The election operation includes 1,300 tablets, added cybersecurity checks, and digital auditing aligned with Spain’s national security scheme.
Results are expected from 8.00 pm on election night, with online tracking available.
What to watch between now and Sunday
If the final days follow the national pattern, two forces will decide Aragón’s outcome more than any manifesto line.
One is turnout among older voters, who tend to vote in higher numbers and can dominate a close contest. The other is late tactical movement on the right: whether PP voters lend support to Vox to strengthen a future coalition partner, or whether they consolidate behind Azcón to reduce Vox’s leverage.
Either way, Aragón looks set to deliver a result that matters far beyond Zaragoza: it will be read as another test of how Spain’s political centre holds up in an era of polarisation, and how far Vox can turn protest into institutional power.
Sources: INE, Cadena SER, GAD3, Heraldo