Underlying the Bush administration officials' predictions is the assumption that the March attack in Madrid in fact brought about the ouster of pro-Bush, Iraq war supporter Prime Minister José María Aznar, who lost to Socialist Party challenger Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero the week after the terrorist attack.

This assumption has incurred little challenge. Members of the media have dutifully echoed the Bush administration's line, presenting as fact that Al Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organization succeeded in bringing about Aznar's defeat. On July 8, CNN justice correspondent Kelli Arena stated -- just prior to CNN's live coverage of Ridge's briefing on possible Al Qaeda plans to disrupt the American election -- that "Al Qaeda could be trying to disrupt the November elections, which they were very successful in doing in Madrid, if you remember."

But the assumption that terrorists successfully brought about Aznar's defeat in Spain is questionable. Even if the Madrid terrorist attacks had not occurred, polls show that the election would have been very close. Opinion polls taken before the attack showed the Populist Party's lead over the rival Socialist Party to be between as few as three percentage points and as many as six percentage points -- figures at or near the statistical margin of error.

Furthermore, in the March 21 European edition of TIME magazine, Paris and Brussels bureau chief James Graff reported, "[J]ust hours before the bombings, results leaked from private PP [Aznar's Populist Party] and PSOE [Zapatero's Socialist Party] polling showed the parties in a dead heat, according to the veteran Madrid journalist José Antonio Martínez Soler."

Other evidence suggests that the terrorist attacks may have had some effect on the outcome of the election -- but only indirectly and not in the manner that the terrorists purportedly intended. After the bombings, the Populist Party was greatly weakened by public accusations of a cover-up when, as Graff noted, the "government [led by Aznar] persisted in blaming the Basque terrorists of ETA -- even after news broke of an al-Qaeda connection" as possible retaliation for "Aznar's support for the war in Iraq, which 90% of Spaniards opposed."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200407150007