Of the 350 seats in the hemicycle of the San Jerónimo race, only 130 are allocated in a proportional way, in accordance with the will expressed at the ballot boxes and according to the criteria established in the Constitution, which contains other provisions that make it difficult to be faithful, more or less exact, between votes and seats. This is the highest number of constituencies for the smallest Congress in more than 150 years, and the highest value of the rural suffrage, since each province has at least two representatives. The distortion is amplified by the fact that the seats are distributed using the D’Hondt method, the most disproportionate of the proportional formulas according to the Council of State. Mismatches occur when there is not much to distribute, as in 29 of the 52 constituencies.
If the Spanish were asked to define the electoral regime in one word, they would respond with a deafening “D’Hondt”. But it would be more appropriate to answer Godzilla, the monster of the slogan “size does matter”. In the Lower House elections, it is so important that it conditions everything, combined with the provincial map of 1833, older than walking, modified in 1977 to the detriment of the big cities, and with the use of the D’Hondt method of allocating seats to the parties most hostile to minorities.
Since the end of the 20th century, there has been a consensus in Political Science that in general there is not one electoral system, but three. They fall between the two large families of the mechanism that serves to convert votes into positions of political representation. In the most classic, the majority, everything that is at stake, or almost everything, is taken by the victor, or the greatest forces. The priority is governability, as is the case in the UK and France.
The proportional system gives preeminence to the representativeness of the Parliament so that it reflects society, as in Holland and Denmark, the two Western European states that come closest to the ideal.
A slightly less exact version, but largely respectful of the voting results, is the one with the Spanish proportional subsystem, similar to that of. It applies to the seven provinces that have at least ten seats. In Madrid and Barcelona, ??with more than 30, the deviations are even smaller. If the D’Hondt law were replaced by the more favorable ones for minorities, Hare and Sainte-Laguë, often only one deputy would change hands. Even in Barcelona in 2011 it would have been the same which method was used. It would have turned out the same.
On June 15, 1977, the opposite situation occurred in the province of Soria. With 59% of the votes, the UCD won 100% of the deputies, three out of three. He also won the plenum in 1977 and 1979 in Ávila, the birthplace of Adolfo Suárez, although there he got at least 64%. In Soria, if one of the other more common proportional methods had been applied, the aforementioned Hare, Sainte-Laguë and also Drop, more beneficial for the majority forces, the PSOE would have had a deputy. With D’Hondt, it was zero.
The Soria case provides the most extreme example of the advantages of large parties in the majority subsystem. In the constituencies of five deputies or less, a disproportionality has been registered since 1977 with airs of the United Kingdom, the majority model par excellence. Only from 2015, in specific situations like those of the CDS in the 1980s in Ávila de Suárez and where nationalism is established, has there been room for more than two parties.
Between the two opposite poles is the intermediate subsystem, that of the sixteen provinces that elect between six and nine deputies. The distortions it has are high, especially in those with fewer seats, but not as much as in the majority model. The deviation between the percentages of votes and seats obtained by the parties is similar to that of the Spanish system as a whole and that of the most similar system, the Portuguese, especially lately.
Godzilla decides the itineraries of the Spanish electoral system and the exact route is fixed by D’Hondt. The calculation of the method is simple. Votes are taken from parties with more than 3% in the constituency and are divided by the deputies in play. For example, in Conca, which has three, it is done by one, two and three. The highest quotients become seats in Congress, as happened in November 2019 with the first two of the PSOE and the first of the PP. Vox was left out, with 18%.
In Spain there was a tradition of putting the surname of the President of the Government in the electoral law, such as the Sagasta law of 1890 and the Maura law of 1907. The 1977 law should be known as the Suárez law. It was a tailor-made suit, with the approval of the opposition. The UCD was chasing the absolute majority with only 37% given by its polls, it squeezed the rural fiefdoms, due to the fact that they were given more seats than they had and with the majority system to get deputies en masse, while it alleviated the urban weakness with the proportional distribution, which did not harm it. It was perfect. But the UCD failed, which took 34%.
Successive winners benefited from the system, which they perpetuated with the approval of the nationalists, who suffered no punishment. The strong penalization of small parties in Spain was the problem, while it was praised for ensuring governability and the presence of the main social currents. Since 2015, governance has become more complicated and the mismatches continue. Don’t say D’Hondt law, say Suarez law.
