Alberto Núñez Feijóo's PP obtained 42 seats in the 2020 Galician elections with almost 48% of the votes. That is, four deputies above the absolute majority of the Parliament of Santiago. However, there could easily have been 39 (only one above the majority of the Chamber), if the 5% limit to obtain representation imposed by Manuel Fraga three decades ago did not exist.
That limit left Podemos without a seat. And the other two “tip” deputies were resolved by very narrow margins (96 ballots in the case of Pontevedra). The current problem of the Galician PP is that some polls – and not only that of the CIS – place it in a voting range around or below 45%, and in that case it no longer depends on itself to retain the absolute majority.
In short, the wear and tear of more than three practically uninterrupted decades in power and a small leak of votes to the benefit of its competitors on the right (Vox and, above all, Democracia Ourensana) could deduct between two and three points from the popular party. relation to its result four years ago. In fact, some survey that leaves Feijóo's party just a few tenths away from the 2020 vote already confirms the possibility that the PP will not go beyond 39 seats. And that could be the starting point for the 18-F appointment.
However, when the vote drops to 45% – or 44%, as occurred in some January polls – the awarding of the last deputy depends on unpredictable results in each province. It is quite true that the popular candidate, Alfonso Rueda, could preserve the absolute majority even with a result like that of the general elections (43.6%) and expand it to 39 seats with the support of Vox. And all this despite adding one hundred thousand fewer votes than the left (or 30,000 less if the comparison is made between blocks and the far-right ballots are also counted).
This paradox means that the popular party starts with a clear advantage thanks to an electoral system tailored to penalize the dispersion of the left and nationalism (and reward the concentration of votes exhibited by the PP). And not just because of the 5% cap. Also, and above all, due to the overrepresentation of the provinces of Lugo and Ourense, where the popular ones sweep and the left obtains its worst results.
Obviously, the formula of penalizing the urban vote to reduce representation to the left does not operate only in Galicia. But even taking into account that handicap, an electoral correlation between the Galician opposition parties different from that of the general elections (and provided that, as in the 23-J, they added many more ballots than the right), can throw up surprises in provinces where the last seat is decided by narrow margins (and although the PP always counts on the external vote as a last resort).
For example, the popular majority would be in danger if the PP garnered 45% of the votes on February 18, while the BNG was around or even exceeded 28% (something very feasible in view of the success of its candidate, with ability to attract ancient popular suffrage through the gateway of Galicianism). Of course, that would require that the PSOE not fall below 17% of the votes, something that is key in any case but that some polls do not guarantee and that can respond to the dynamics of the useful left vote and the burden of the pacts between Sánchez and the Catalan independence movement.
In this hypothetical scenario, the popular party would predictably win the last seat in almost all the provinces. In this way, the majority of the PP would depend, for example, on Sumar – which some polls have placed above 4% – not achieving seats in Pontevedra and A Coruña by not reaching the minimum limit. But, unless the dispute with Podemos ends up ending the options of Yolanda Díaz's group, those two seats at stake may depend on a fairly affordable number of ballots.
Likewise, it could also happen that it was a rising Nationalist Bloc (around 30% of the vote) that snatched the last seat from the PP in A Coruña and Pontevedra. And for this, the margin would not go beyond 1,000 or 2,000 ballots in each constituency. This scenario (which, like the previous one, would leave the popular party with 37 deputies, one away from the majority) would give decisive weight to the Ourense factor. This province was already decisive in Fraga's first absolute majority, in 1989. Then a few hundred votes decided seat 38 there in favor of the PP, despite the fact that the left and the nationalists gathered 40,000 more votes in Galicia as a whole.
Now, the Ourense factor is specifically called Democracia Ourensana (DO), a localist party that competes in that province and has a chance of winning a seat. Some polls give him around 10,000 votes; that is, more than 5% provincial and, therefore, in a position to win one of the last parliamentarians. And if the Popular Party remained at 37 seats because the left has managed to add a couple more deputies in Atlantic Galicia, Ourense's last position would be decisive.
The explanation is simple. If that last seat corresponded in principle to the left (PSOE or BNG), but ended up being awarded by a DO with arbitration power, this group would foreseeably provide the PP with deputy number 38 (quid pro quo, since the leader of that local force governs the capital with popular support), and the left would continue in opposition. If, on the other hand, the last deputy from Ourense corresponded to the PP, his loss in favor of DO would not alter the correlation of blocks. In short, an unlikely combination of scenarios, but not entirely impossible.
