socialists take Spain

Wasn't able to find this on the web yet, but the Socialists are claiming victory in the Spanish elections.

The AP seems to have the most recently updated report:

Spain's ruling Popular Party looked headed for defeat in elections overshadowed by the Madrid terror bombings, with the opposition Socialists poised to score spectacular gains, according to partial results.

With 56 percent of the votes counted, the conservatives — who had been projected to win comfortably before the bombings — fell from 183 seats in the last 350-seat legislature to 146. The Socialists soared from 125 to 163.

Turnout was high at 76 percent. Voters expressed anger with the government, accusing it of provoking the Madrid attacks by supporting the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which most Spaniards opposed.

“Most” indeed: on the order of 90% were opposed to the war.

The Socialist win ends a string of center-right victories across the Continent in recent years, and indeed may tip the balance in Europe.

Without doubt the new Spanish government will be less friendly to US objectives, and likely will pull its troops out of Iraq unless the UN is given more authority.

But the immediate impact is this: terrorists have brought down a government in spectacular fashion. Our allies are in greater danger now than before.

And the probability of a large attack in this country, on the eve of our election, just went up by an order of magnitude.

Bloody hell.

More here.

UPDATE. Here, too: “The Spanish electorate has made a very shortsighted and cowardly decision, and the world may suffer as a result.”

Glenn also links to this Lee Harris column from last week:

[I]f it was Al Qaeda, or one of its allies or competitors, then we may be on the verge of a frightening new development — the emergence of catastrophic terror as a deliberate tool for manipulating, or even subverting, the democratic process in European nations, and potentially in our own as well.

This is a blacker day for the West than were the bombings of 3/11.