The Spanish electoral system is being much more volatile with the current blocs of right and left than when a single force could dominate Congress. Since 2015, none of the two ideological poles has come close to the 176 deputies of the absolute majority. At most, in 2016, PP and Cs were left with seven seats, despite having 46.1% of the votes. Today’s survey by La Vanguardia, as it happens with the three main daily polls that are being published, shows that the bar to dominate Congress would now be close to 47%, about four points more than in bipartisanship
The direct route to the absolute majority, which exists in councils and was there in autonomies, is uncommon in developed countries. It consists of getting more than 50% of the votes. The New Zealand Labor Jacinda Ardern in 2020 or the Portuguese conservative Cavaco Silva in 1987 and 1991 narrowly achieved this.
The Yale political scientist Douglas Rae defined the other modality in 1967 as that of “manufactured” absolute majorities, manufactured by the electoral system. The four that have existed in Spain since 1977 are included in this group, even, albeit narrowly, the overwhelming victory of socialist Felipe González in 1982, with 48.1%.
The other three, that of the PSOE in 1986 and those of the PP, in 2000 and 2011, were achieved with between 44% and 45%, at least ten points ahead of the second party and they were slack, of 183 to 186 deputies. This margin indicates that they would have had enough with 43% of the votes or less. This possibility was also supported by the result of 1989. With 40%, González was one seat away from the absolute majority, so in practice, he had it. It was with a great fragmentation for the time and with a lot of luck, since in many provinces he got the last deputy in the game, the most profitable. In a Spain with so many constituencies, 52, chance must also be taken into account.
From the legend of Sherwood Forest, Douglas Rae constructed his happy metaphor for how electoral systems work. He likened them to Robin Hood’s enemy, the Sheriff of Nottingham, because when votes are converted into seats, they steal the poor, small parties for the benefit of the rich, big ones. This spoils for the most voted forces is how the system manufactures absolute majorities without 50% of the vote.
With blocs, the operation becomes more complicated, because the loot obtained from the force that has been imposed at the polls is no longer only used to expand its parliamentary representation. He must also offset the penalty that his junior partner usually suffers.
In 2016, when the right-wing bloc reached its ceiling, with 169 deputies, the PP took 137, 21 more than it would actually be entitled to. Therein lay the spoils of Rae’s metaphor. But the most penalized party was its partner, Ciutadans, which got 32, despite the fact that with ideal proportionality it would have taken 46. So, with 46.1% of the votes, the right was far behind of the 176 deputies. Since the collapse of bipartisanship, no one has come close to this quota, since the progressive record is 165 seats in April 2019.
In the Ipsos poll, the PP and Vox have a comfortable majority of 181 seats with 47.9% of the votes, so they would also have it with fewer votes. The daily barometers of GAD3 and Sigma Two for ABC and El Mundo also show a Congress dominated by the right, with more than 47% of the ballots. On the other hand, 40dB places El País among the popular and ultras with 170 seats in all, and attributes 46% to them. The third way is that of the British multinational YouGov, which has broken into Spain and gives an absolute majority to the PP and Vox with only 45%.
Since 1977, nationalists and regionalists have taken an average of 9% of the vote, with fluctuations between the minimum of 6.9% in 2016 and the ceiling of 11.4% in the last election, which now seems unrepeatable This third space does not only limit the field of the absolute majority. In order to govern, it forces the right to have parliamentary hegemony or to come as close to it as possible, since it would hardly agree with the UPN deputy or perhaps the CC deputy, if there is one. So the key to 23-J lies in whether the PP and Vox add up to at least 176 seats, for which in principle they would need to reach the magic number of 47%.
