This Sunday’s Catalan elections will once again be decided by a handful of votes. Although the majority of surveys published until last Monday pointed to a clear advantage for the PSC over the candidacy led by Carles Puigdemont – a much wider difference than the one obtained in 2021 over ERC and Junts in that triple technical tie –, the strong fragmentation of the electorate that has characterized Catalan politics for more than a decade means that any prediction about the composition of the future Government of the Generalitat lacks sufficiently solid foundations. It is no longer just a matter of the close dispute between the main parties, but also between the candidates who, despite having no chance of victory, are called to play a decisive role starting next Monday.
In the last elections, only 84,227 votes separated the Socialists, winners for the third time of a Catalan party, from the third place, Junts, in a very close fight between these two formations and Esquerra Republicana that was resolved with a tie of 33 seats between PSC and ERC and with Junts almost equaling their records (32 deputies) and taking over the key to a pro-independence government that would break up with a bang just a year and a half after those elections.
It so happens that even having been the first political force in Catalan elections on three occasions, only on one occasion was that victory in votes also in the number of seats obtained, although even on February 14, 2021 it had to share that award with Esquerra Republicana, which got the same deputies. In the two contests in which Pasqual Maragall’s candidacy was the one that garnered the most popular support (1999 and 2003), he was surpassed by CiU by four seats.
To find precedents for the difference of less than 50,000 votes that separated the PSC from ERC in 2021, we must go back precisely to the parliamentary elections of 1999 and 2003, the most polarized of the 13 held to date, largely as consequence of the transition to Catalan politics of the former socialist mayor of Barcelona. The candidate of the PSC and Ciutadans pel Canvi defeated his direct rivals in the duels that he fought with Jordi Pujol, first, and with Artur Mas, later, although in the end the distribution of seats would play in favor of CiU. On both occasions, the difference in favor of Maragall was small, 4,879 and 7,029 ballots, respectively.
Only on three occasions has the leading political force in a Catalan election not surpassed the threshold of one million votes. It was in Jordi Pujol’s first victory in 1980, in Artur Mas’s in 2006 – which was not enough to prevent the leftist tripartite led by the socialist José Montilla from sending him to the opposition – and in Salvador Illa’s three years ago. years.
These last elections, very marked by the effects of the pandemic and the heavy hangover of the process, which reduced participation to 51.29% (almost 28 points less than in the exceptional event in 2017), marked the worst record in absolute terms (654,766 votes), but also relative (23.03%) and in number of seats (33) of the winner of an election to the Parliament since the democratic restoration.
The absolute record of votes is held by the coalition participated by Convergència Demòcratica de Catalunya and Esquerra Republicana with the support of sovereign entities such as the Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural in 2015. On that occasion, the fleeting brand of Junts pel Sí garnered more than 1.6 million votes or, in other words, almost a million more than Illa three years ago.
The growing fragmentation of the Catalan vote is relatively reflected in the number of parties that have obtained parliamentary representation throughout these four decades of elections. The number of groups formed at the beginning of each legislature has ranged between five (1984, 1992, 1995, 1999 and 2003) and eight in the last period. If the polls are correct, there will also be eight groups into which the Catalan Chamber will be divided after this Sunday’s elections.