If the demographic consensus does not founder in a Portuguese-style outcome (where the announced tie between right and left became an absolute majority for the socialist António Costa), the elections on 23-J will result in a victory for the bloc made up of PP and Vox. At least that is what the overwhelming majority of polls predict. In fact, some forecasts are very predictable after the disappearance of Ciudadanos.
For example, if in the April 2019 elections the popular (with 16.7% of the ballots) and Cs (with 15.9%) had run under the same acronym, the result would have been very different: the center-right would have added almost 33% of the votes and 139 seats. And even if the left had won the same votes, it would have gotten 11 fewer seats. In other words, the PP-Ciudadanos merger would be the winner of the elections and would gather, together with Vox, eight more seats than the left (and altogether, 15 more than it actually obtained).
Of course, the conservative block would have been very far (14 deputies) from the absolute majority to govern. Could the same thing happen in the 23-J elections? Most of the polls say no and that PP and Vox will be above the magic barrier of 176 deputies. However, previous elections that have delivered an absolute majority to the conservative space (which in Spain would range from the center-right to the far-right) provide extrapolations that oscillate between an insufficient majority and a landslide victory.
In this sense, the elections of 1977 -the first of the current parliamentary democracy- handed over to the conservative forces more than 180 deputies, with a total vote count of 45.3%. The left, on the other hand, and although it added only eight tenths less, it gathered 144 deputies. The paradox of projecting this correlation to the current scenario is that the result in seats could be very different: less than 170 for the right and 154 for the left. The explanation? In 1977 and 1979, the PSOE concentrated its vote in the most urban Spain, while the right was very strong in deep Spain.
Proof of this was that in various provinces of Castilla and Galicia the UCD and Alianza Popular took all the seats up for grabs and the left did not get representation. And although the irruption of Vox has reinforced the conservative vote in rural Spain, it does not seem that it can reach the levels of almost 50 years ago. In fact, in the 1979 elections, and despite adding fewer votes than the socialists and communists, the right retained an absolute majority and the left repeated the same number of seats.
Instead, today, the correlation of 1979 would leave a kind of technical tie around 160 seats between PP and Vox, on the one hand, and PSOE and Sumar on the other. To now reach an absolute majority, the conservative bloc should at least replicate the correlation of 2000, when it gathered 45% of the votes and obtained almost a five-point advantage over the left (which translated into an absolute majority of 183 deputies). And even in that assumption – which could bring the popular to 34% of the votes and Vox to 11% – the conservative majority would be very narrow in the current scenario.
Only an advantage of the right over the left equal to or greater than five points would generate a clear majority of the conservative bloc. 12 years ago, PP (186), UPyD (5) and FA (1) gathered more than 190 seats and almost 50% of the votes (13 points more than the left). And a similar calculation would now reap PP and Vox if they reproduced that advantage. But the final scenario will depend, as always, on the mobilization of each block.
