Two weeks before the general election, the most likely result estimated by Ipsos gives an absolute majority to the sum of the two main right-wing parties, PP and Vox. With a participation of 70%, lower than the average of all the general elections held so far, the Popular would obtain 145 seats with 35.3% of the votes. Vox, for its part, would obtain 36 deputies with 12.6% of the vote: 16 seats and 2.5 points less than four years ago. Between the two of them, they would have 181 seats in the Congress of Deputies, that is to say, five more than the absolute majority. A single certainty: the PP will, with all certainty, be the party that obtains the most votes and seats in the next 23-J. From here, we enter an area of ??uncertainty. Some sharper than others. As of now, they would do so with some comfort. But we must not forget that some seats in dispute involve a zero sum: the seat that would incorporate one block would have to be subtracted from the other, so that the difference now estimated would be lower than it might seem in principle. Taking the worst ends of the forks of the two right-wing parties, they would add up to 170 deputies, six short of the absolute majority. Adding the two highest ends would bring together 186 seats. In any case, the possibility is not foreseen that the PSOE and Sumar alone will manage to reach the 176 seats. The best data for the Socialists next to the best data for those of Yolanda Díaz would result in 152 seats, 24 below the absolute majority”.

This is the summary of the Ipsos pre-election poll report for La Vanguardia that was published on Sunday, July 9. After reading it, could we say that the polls were wrong?

This scenario predicted an asymmetrical participation of six points in favor of the right compared to the left. The hypothesis we formulated, based on this data, is that the right would vote as in the elections of April 28, 2019 (when it obtained the support of 11.5 million voters), while the left would as in the electoral repeat of November 10 of that same year (when he obtained 10.5 million).

However, the results of 23-J have confirmed only part of the hypothesis. Indeed, on Sunday the left (PSOE Sumar) voted practically as on 10-N (PSOE UP Compromís Mas País): 10.7 million votes. But the right (PP Vox UPN) has remained at an intermediate point: 11.1 million ballots. How do you explain that the participation was finally not so unequal between the right and the left? In the absence of the first post-electoral studies, we have an intuition: the demobilization of 400,000 center-right voters has occurred in the last week. In April four years ago, the PP together with Ciutadans obtained 8.5 million votes. On Sunday, the popular ones stayed at 8.1 million.

What has happened to cause these changes? Well, nothing more and nothing less than an electoral campaign that has caused realignments, especially during the last week. Could we have loved the 23-J vote better? Yes, but only really for the case of the PSOE. And we had data to do it. The polls did not fail, in any case (and only partially) the electoral kitchen did, that is, the decision on the correct model to estimate the vote.

With these choices, at least three interpretations could be proposed based on the same raw survey data. Three models: (1) an estimate using as a key variable the memory of voting in the last municipal elections of May 28, 2023; (2) an estimate using that of the last general election on November 10, 2019; (3) an estimate adjusting the asymmetric demobilization to the estimated participation (71%), with more weight in the most recent election. This last option was the one we used. The total average error for all matches was less than one point. The weakness: the underestimation of the PSOE (28.2% estimated against 31.7% obtained, that is to say, 3.5 points less). This was the only significant difference that kept the possibility of a right-wing majority alive. Today we know that a model more faithful to (1) would have been closer to the final result, because we could have estimated the PSOE between 31% and 32% (we insist, using the same raw data from the survey), a fact that had ruled out the possibility of a PP and Vox majority. It was an analytical decision attributable only to the pollsters, not the survey. In short, another lesson in the importance of the electoral kitchen.