Do the votes or the seats rule? The PP's claim to be allowed to govern automatically when it is the party with the most votes leads to a logic that clashes with the institutional functioning of Spanish democracy. In Spain, voters elect the Parliament which, in turn, elects the President of the Government. And this is how parliamentary monarchies work. It is in presidential republics (and not in all) where citizens directly elect the head of the State (who is also the head of the Government). Therefore, cheating with the rules of legitimacy is dangerous. In Catalonia, after the secessionist failure in the so-called “plebiscitary elections” of 2015 – which had to measure support for independence in votes – some of its promoters suddenly changed their criteria and opted to count only seats. A self-deception with catastrophic results.
Now, the problem with placing extreme emphasis on the popular vote is that it could end up delegitimizing a good part of the governments that have been established in Spain, and especially those chaired by the PP. For example, in 1996 the investiture of José María Aznar – also supported by CiU, PNV and Canarian Coalition – had the indirect support of almost eleven and a half million votes (which included all the parties that supported his investiture and that provided him with absolute majority in seats). But if only the votes were counted, the rejection of his candidacy then approached 13 million votes (those gathered by PSOE, IU and the left-wing nationalists). And those 13 million voters represented 51% of those who went to the polls. Could it be said then that Aznar came to the Government against the express will of more than half of the Spaniards?
If the same logic were applied, the Government of Mariano Rajoy that emerged from the 2016 elections would face the same problem. Aside from the democratic anomaly that the main opposition party gave him the presidency for free through the self-imposed abstention of 68 socialist deputies, his legitimacy would be questioned if he had to rely only on the votes behind the parties that supported him. They gave parliamentary support (PP, Ciudadanos and Canarian Coalition). These parties gathered just over 11 million ballots. However, the bloc opposed to a PP Executive totaled more than 12 million voters (over the 24 million who cast their vote in June 2016). Did Rajoy have a legitimacy problem?
The constitutional answer is no, the same as the motion of censure that overthrew the leader of the PP in 2018. Of course, if the democratic magnifying glass is placed only on the votes, the motion of censure that brought Pedro Sánchez to Moncloa would have greater legitimacy, since it had a million more voters than the count gathered by the center-right groups. But perhaps it was that selective magnifying glass that led Pablo Casado to delegitimize the PSOE and Unidas Podemos Cabinet that emerged from the November 2019 elections. In that investiture, the formations that supported Sánchez represented 315,000 fewer voters than all the groups that They voted against.
Finally, the investiture that Alberto Núñez Feijóo will undergo on September 26 would not withstand the sieve of the popular vote either. The formations that have promised his support (Vox, Canarian Coalition and UPN) together with the PP add up to almost 11,300,000 votes. On the contrary, the groups that have expressed their rejection gather nearly 12,400,000 votes; that is, more than 50% of those who went to vote on 23-J. But the seats rule. And although these do not give him a majority either, Feijóo should keep in mind that with barely a third of the ballots he garnered almost 40% of the deputies.
