Henry -

You are making certain assumptions about the motivations of the bombers. The election took place three days after the bombing. It was not clear at this stage who carried out the bombing let alone what their motivations were. We now know that al Qaeda were involved but their is still no clear evidence that they intended for a Socialist government to come to power. An argument can be made that in fact they wanted to cement in a victory for the ruling party. For example, see this. Given the uncertainty, the rational thing for the Spanish people to do was to vote for the party they intended to vote for anyway (as you acknowledge). I suspect that most in fact did, given the opposition to the Iraq war that was already prevalent in Spain and given that larger turnouts have tended to favour the socialists. That more people turned out to vote is not a victory for the terorists but a victory for democracy (and it is so, even if we hate socialism). Until we know more about what the bombers intended we cannot say that they won. I am not denying what happened. Sure the terrorists may think they were successful. But it doesn't help when we agree with them, especially when the evidence is not in and most especially when it may be the case that they didn't win. I agree that we need to make clear to people the dangers in changing your vote in response to terrorism but we cannot tell those who would not otherwise have voted to stay away from the polls. That is silliness.

Danny