What follows is a mathematical exercise, but also a political one. It is worth starting with the disclaimers: the results of the elections are not automatically extrapolated. Each election is different, the candidates, the constituencies, the electoral rules, the political moment, the participation, the motivations of the voters and a long etcetera with which this article could be filled. However, and with all the cautions, it is possible to carry out a mathematical translation of the results of 28-M, applying the D'Hondt method, to the general ones. The conclusion of this exercise is that, if the data of this Sunday were reproduced in a general, the result would be a clear victory of the PP in number of deputies in Congress, but at the expense above all of Vox and Citizens. Alberto Núñez Feijóo would be far from the absolute majority even adding the deputies of the extreme right.
The calculations have been made both with the results of the municipal elections (the elections that were held throughout Spain) and with those of the autonomous ones where they were and the local ones in the rest of the communities. The parties do not present candidacies in all the municipalities, which produces a very important distortion from the start, so it is useful to use as a contrast the data of the autonomic ones, which are usually more similar to general ones. But the problem of the autonomic ones is that they were not celebrated throughout the country. The differences, in any case, are not great between the two methods. A vote like Sunday's would overturn the composition of Congress, but would not leave clear majorities.
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With the results of the municipal elections, the PP would become the party with the most seats, with 143 deputies, 54 more than until now. But it would win almost all those deputies at the expense of Vox, which would lose 37, and Ciudadanos, which would disappear from Congress losing its 10 seats. The collapse of Vox – it would go from 52 to 15 seats – may seem counterintuitive, because its territorial results have improved a lot compared to the municipal elections of May 2019. However, in the general elections of November 10, 2019, he had 15% of votes, and on Sunday, only 7%, which, applying electoral arithmetic, would punish his representation harshly.
Projection in the Congress of Deputies of the results of the regional elections
350 seats. The results of the municipal elections in the communities where there were no autonomous communities are used.
Others (2023): ERC (12), JxCat (12), PNV (7), EH Bildu (8), Más País/IU (7), CUP (1), CC-NC (5), UPN/Na+ (2), BNG (4), Compromís/APG (5), PRC (1), Teruel Hay (1), Geroa Bai (1).
Others (2019): ERC (13), JxCat (8), PNV (6), EH Bildu (5), Más País/IU (2), CUP (2), CC-NC (2), UPN/Na+ (2), BNG (1), Compromís/APG (1), PRC (1), Teruel Hay (1).
The sum of PP and Vox, therefore, would remain at 158 seats, far from the 176 that give the absolute majority and only seven more than those that PP + Vox + Ciudadanos now have. The PP could count on the two of UPN (formerly Navarra Suma) and could also attract the moderate Canarian nationalists, Teruel Hay and the PRC. In the two simulations, despite slight variations in the distribution, this sum would reach 165 seats. Not even with the PNV (difficult to put in the same bag as Vox) would the absolute majority be reached. The risk of an ungovernable Congress, given the fragmentation and polarization of Spanish politics, is once again on the table.
Although the PSOE has lost a lot of territorial power in Sunday's elections, a transfer of the votes received to seats in Congress would allow Pedro Sánchez's party to maintain or even increase its representation. In fact, in percentage, the result of the Socialists is very similar to that of the general elections of November 2019. According to calculations, the results of the municipal elections of 28-M would give the PSOE 122 seats, two more than it has. With the figures of the autonomic ones, it would remain the same as now.
The one that does sink is its government partner, Unidas Podemos. In reality, it is difficult to make an analysis of what their representation would be in Congress. The leftist candidacies have become an alphabet soup that compete with each other and it is not even easy to make the simulation to assign seats to one party or another, since they are intermingled depending on municipalities and provinces. What the mathematical exercise does show is that the division of the vote of the parties to the left of the PSOE would reduce their joint representation and facilitate a right-wing majority.
Unidas Podemos would collapse in a similar way to Vox. Between Comuns, Més and Con Andalucía they would achieve only eight deputies. If the aggregate data of these formations are taken together with the deputies that would achieve More Country, Compromís and IU in their different denominations, the extrapolation of the results of the municipal ones would show a fall from the 38 deputies that add now (35 of Unidas Podemos, 2 of Más País and 1 of Compromís) to only 18. The thing does not change much when doing the simulation with the result of the autonomic ones. A key factor in the general elections will therefore be the way in which the left participates. The division of the vote between Sumar and Podemos would punish their presence in Congress.
The other winners in the simulation are the nationalist parties, benefited by their greater implantation in their respective territories, with a presence in almost all the municipalities (unlike Vox and Podemos, for example, which are therefore somewhat penalized in an exercise of this type). EH Bildu stands out especially, which would reach nine seats extrapolating the result of the municipal elections (it now has five). It would also increase its representation Junts per Catalunya, from eight to 12 seats, and the BNG, which would go from one to four.
It is an exercise in political fiction. But it is also true that the last three municipal elections have successfully pointed to the underlying trend. In the 2011 elections, Mariano Rajoy's party emerged triumphant and the extrapolation brought it closer to an absolute majority that it later conquered. Already in the previous European elections, the extrapolation pointed to a total turnaround in the composition of the Congress that later became a reality.
Although a boiling political landscape, with the emergence of Podemos and Ciudadanos, complicated the analysis, the conclusion of the results of the municipal and regional elections of 2015 was that in a general election they would leave an ungovernable Congress. This is how it happened: the elections had to be repeated due to the impossibility of forming a government. And, in 2019, the victory of the PSOE in the municipal and regional elections also corresponded to its triumph in the subsequent general elections.
In Spanish democratic history, however, there are examples in the opposite direction: those in which the municipal elections did not anticipate the trend of the general elections. Perhaps the most prominent is that of 2007 and 2008, as the PP won the municipal elections before José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero defeated Mariano Rajoy again in 2008.
What will happen this time? No one knows. What the data does show is that the PP will need to win by a greater margin if it wants to secure governability. Despite the logical euphoria of the popular for the overturn of power in a large number of communities and municipalities this 28-M, a result like this Sunday would not guarantee, in principle, Feijóo reach La Moncloa. And on the contrary: despite the pain of an unmitigated defeat, the PSOE does not have the electoral battle lost.
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