All the polls, except those of the CIS, give a winner today in the elections to the PP of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The problem for the popular ones is that the list with the most votes is not guaranteed the presidency as happens in many autonomous communities (Catalonia, Extremadura, the Canary Islands or Navarra) where the one that obtained the most votes does not govern. It is the majority of the deputies in Congress who will choose the future president, which makes the left bloc maintain hope, which today appears to be in a position of inferiority. Apart from what the polls say, when the socialist ranks speak of a comeback, it is clear that they are not first. Only those who are behind can come back.
In this context, a good part of what will happen tonight is in the hands of the method invented in 1878 by the Belgian jurist Victor d’Hondt and which is applied under peculiar conditions in Spain. As Anxo Lugilde explains today in La Vanguardia, the last seats of some constituencies can vary by very few votes and decisively affect the result of the left and right blocks. The system is distorted especially in 29 of the 52 constituencies, which are the ones with the smallest population, by giving greater value to rural suffrage. Thus, the smallest provinces are overrepresented, and, on the other hand, the vote of the largest, such as Madrid, Barcelona, ??Seville or Valencia, is worth less and the system is proportional. There are medium-sized provinces, among which between 6 and 10 seats will be distributed, where the fight between Sumar and Vox to be third party and get a deputy can be decisive in the final sum. A thousand votes in some of these provinces can decide a seat and even a majority.
For this reason, the possibility that the bloc on the right, with PP and Vox, can achieve the absolute majority that some polls have predicted, is not so clear. The PP achieved it when it swept many of these provinces, taking all the seats in contention. This is the reason for Feijóo’s intense campaign in the so-called emptied Spain – in Teruel he even said that he wants to be the president of rural Spain. All the disquisitions and cabals of these days come to an end. Today we will leave doubts.
