The barrier, the decisive electoral guillotine

In 10 out of 30 constituencies voting 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
28 May 2023 Sunday 05:07
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The barrier, the decisive electoral guillotine

In 10 out of 30 constituencies voting today, as well as in the Valencian Community, it is enough to overcome the legal barrier of 3% or 5% to have representation. It is a high figure compared to that of the Congress of Deputies, in which the same thing only happens in two of the 52 constituencies. The set of regional parliaments exceeds 3.5 times the number of deputies of the Congress, in which percentages much higher than the 3% of the legal bar are required to obtain seats, except for Madrid and Barcelona.

As it also happens in municipal elections in urban areas, the minimum threshold is key to the autonomous regions. Today it could be decisive in the most coveted place, the Valencian Community, in addition to Madrid and Cantabria and even in the Balearic Islands, Aragon and, less likely, LaRioja. It may also be relevant in Murcia.

They are the forecasts that emanate from the surveys. We will see in the scrutiny, as indicated by the recent Greek demographic slide. But the more than 40 years of autonomy show the relevance of the barriers, for the times they have left parties out of parliaments and, above all, for the daring eagerness of various political forces to try to mold them to their calculations.

The minimum threshold, expressed as a percentage of votes, aims to reduce parliamentary fragmentation and facilitate governance. When it comes into action, it works like an electoral guillotine. It annihilates the party that does not get there, since the votes are not taken into account in the important part, the distribution of seats, a fact that favors the big ones.

In Spain, it works in all elections, except the European ones, and applies to each constituency, but with some regional exceptions. The most prominent is precisely that of the Valencian Community, apparently a key territory today, which requires exceeding 5% throughout the autonomy. For example, with the usual criterion of the constituency, the CDS would have obtained two deputies for Alicante in 1991, a fact that would have prevented the slim 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, as it was reduced from 6% to 4%. And there is another complementary one of 15% on each island, which favors the strengths 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, Aragon, Murcia and Navarre are the communities that vote today where it is easier to get representation. The threshold is set at 3% and they have at least one large constituency of 34 MPs or more. In Castilla-La Mancha there is the same bar of 3%, but since the popular María Dolores de Cospedal promoted a brutal reduction in the number of deputies, exceeding it does not guarantee anything.

In Madrid, La Rioja, Cantabria and the Balearic Islands the barrier is 5%, as in municipalities. In these autonomies, surpassing it guarantees to remove deputies, although in the Balearic case only on the island of Mallorca.

If in Valencia the threshold is key for the center-left or the right-wing bloc to govern, whether or not the alliance of Podemos and IU enters, in theory it would be necessary in Madrid to obtain an absolute majority for the popular Isabel Díaz Ayuso, if Podemos does not reach 5%.

Podemos and IU are also at odds in Cantabria, a situation perhaps crucial for regionalist Miguel Ángel Revilla to be saved or to fall. And the threshold can have an impact on the complex Aragonese puzzle, depending on which parties overcome it in Zaragoza. In La Rioja, more remotely, the fact that the Espanya Buidada alliance with the regionalists gets representation could influence the governability, while in the Balearic Islands the regionalist El Pi struggles with the barrier. In Murcia the question is symbolic, in case the party from Cartagena finally gets a seat.

There is another Valencian exception. The barrier is calculated on all votes, including the void ones, while in the rest of the elections only the blanks and those of the parties count. The threshold in Valencia is therefore slightly 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 the desire of the electoral engineers. They are the ones who try to adjust the rules to the calculations, as the Galician Manuel Fraga did in 1992, who for some reason was professor of State Theory and Constitutional Law.