The barrier, the decisive electoral guillotine

In 10 of 30 constituencies that vote today, as well as in the Valencian community, it is enough to overcome the legal barrier of 3 or 5% to have representation.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
27 May 2023 Saturday 22:22
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The barrier, the decisive electoral guillotine

In 10 of 30 constituencies that vote today, as well as in the Valencian community, it is enough to overcome the legal barrier of 3 or 5% to have representation. This is a high figure compared to that of the Congress of Deputies, in which the same thing only happens in 2 of its 52 constituencies. The set of autonomous parliaments exceeds the number of deputies in Congress by 3.5 times, in which to obtain seats it is necessary to obtain percentages well above the 3% legal bar, except in Madrid and Barcelona.

As also occurs in municipal elections in urban areas, the minimum threshold is key in regional elections. Today it could be decisive in the most coveted place, the Valencian Community, as well as in Madrid and Cantabria and even in the Balearic Islands, Aragon and, with less probabilities, in La Rioja. In addition to perhaps being relevant in Murcia.

These are the forecasts that emanate from the surveys. In the scrutiny it will be seen, as indicated by the recent Greek demoscopic slippage. But these more than 40 years of autonomy show the relevance of the barriers, due to the times they have left parties out of parliament and, above all, due to the determined efforts of various political forces in trying to adapt them to their calculations.

This minimum threshold, expressed as a percentage of votes, is intended to reduce parliamentary fragmentation and facilitate governability. When it goes into action it works like an electoral guillotine. It annihilates the party that does not reach it, since its votes are not taken into account in what is important, the distribution of seats, which usually favors the big ones.

In Spain it operates in all elections except the European ones and is applied in each constituency, although with some regional exceptions. The most outstanding is precisely that of the apparently key territory today, the Valencian Community, which requires exceeding 5% in all autonomy. For example, with the usual criteria of the constituency, the CDS would have obtained two deputies for Alicante in 1991, which would have prevented the tight absolute majority of the socialist Joan Lerma.

There is also the autonomous barrier in the Canary Islands, but, after the 2018 reform, it is lower, being reduced from 6% to 4%. And there is another complementary 15% on each island, which favors the forces of La Gomera and El Hierro. In Extremadura there is a provincial bar and another regional one, of 5%, which are combined, which makes it easier to overcome them.

Asturias, Aragón, Murcia and Navarra appear as the communities that vote today in which it is easier to obtain representation. Their threshold is 3% and they have at least one large constituency, with 34 deputies or more. In Castilla-La Mancha, that same 3% bar applies, but since the popular María Dolores de Cospedal promoted a brutal reduction in the number of deputies, exceeding it does not guarantee anything at all.

In Madrid, La Rioja, Cantabria and the Balearic Islands, the barrier stands at 5%, as in the municipal ones. Skipping it ensures in these autonomies to get deputies, although in the case of the Balearic Islands only on the island of Mallorca.

If in Valencia the threshold appears as a key for the center-left or right-wing bloc to govern, in case the alliance of Podemos and IU enters or not, in Madrid in theory it would be for obtaining an absolute majority for the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso, if we can, it does not reach 5%.

Podemos and IU are also on the wire in Cantabria, a situation perhaps crucial for the regionalist Miguel Ángel Revilla to be saved or to fall. And the threshold can have an impact on the complex hand puzzle, depending on which parties exceed it in Zaragoza. In La Rioja, more remotely, the fact that the alliance of Empty Spain with the regionalists achieves representation could influence governance, while in the Balearic Islands the regionalist El Pi fights with the barrier. In Murcia the issue is symbolic, in case the Cartagena party finally gets a seat.

There is another Valencian exception. His barrier is calculated on all the votes, null included, while in the rest of the elections only whites and those of the parties are computed. The threshold of Valencia is thus a little higher. Translated into the usual calculation in Spain, the average for this century is 5.06%.

The changes registered since the beginning of autonomy in the barrier of nine communities, in Euskadi twice and in Catalonia none because it is governed by Spanish law, show that they are the great object of desire of electoral engineers. They are the ones who try to adjust the rules to their calculations, as the Galician Manuel Fraga did in 1992, who was a professor of State Theory and Constitutional Law for a reason.