Colau, Montero and D'Hondt: how Spain's split left hands seats to the right
Sumar's successor and Podemos are running against each other almost everywhere. In the small and medium provinces that elect most of Congress, two lists of six and four per cent win nothing, where one of ten could win a seat.
Polling Forecast
3 min read
data as of 11 November Written in house from our poll data and our forecast.
In 2023 the parties to the left of the PSOE ran as one list, Sumar, and won 31 seats on 12.3% of the vote. In 2026 they are running as two. The Frente Amplio, the alliance of Sumar's parties led by the former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau after Yolanda Díaz stood down, is on 5.9% in our average. Podemos, which left Sumar in December 2023 and has Irene Montero at the top of its list, is on 1.9%.
Add them up and you get under eight per cent, well down on 2023. Split them and it gets worse.
Why splitting costs seats
Spain elects its 350 deputies in 52 constituencies, by D'Hondt. Madrid and Barcelona are big enough that a party on five or six per cent wins a couple of seats. Most provinces are not: more than half of them elect six deputies or fewer, and there a list usually needs more than ten per cent to win anything.
Take a seven-seat province, the size of Asturias or Zaragoza, and roughly today's national shares: the PP on 33%, the PSOE 27, Vox 19, the Frente Amplio 7 and Podemos 5. D'Hondt gives the PP three seats, the PSOE two and Vox two. The seventh goes to Vox's second candidate, with 9.5% of the vote behind it.
Now run the two left lists together, on 12%. They take the seventh seat, and Vox's second candidate misses out. Same votes, one seat moved from right to left, and in a race where the right is above 176 by twenty-odd seats, each of those swings is worth two in the gap.
Where the deals were done, and where they weren't
Podemos and the Frente Amplio failed to agree a national list, but they did reach some regional arrangements. In Catalonia Podemos is standing alongside ERC, Gabriel Rufián's party. In the Valencian Community, Podemos's María Teresa Pérez heads the Compromís-Front Valencià list in Alicante, which El Debate says may be the only seat Podemos wins anywhere in Spain. The polls there give Compromís between two and five of the region's 33 seats (El Debate).
For the Senate the left did cooperate: the PSOE and the Frente Amplio are running joint "Senate of Progress" candidates in 49 constituencies. In Congress, where it matters for government, there is no such arrangement.
What the polls say
The polls vary on how badly the left is doing. GAD3 for ABC gives the Frente Amplio 12 seats and Podemos one; 40dB gives the Frente Amplio 10 and Podemos none (La Voz del Sur). Sigma Dos is the most generous, with the Frente Amplio on 8.1% and 15 seats. Our projection is the least generous, 7 seats on 5.9%, because the Frente Amplio's vote is spread thin outside the big cities.
Whichever is right, the left of the PSOE is on course to lose half its seats or more. That is the hidden part of the PP and Vox majority: the PSOE is projected to lose only eight seats on 2023, but the parties it would need to govern with are on course to lose twenty-four.
The tactical vote
The PSOE's best hope may not be a recovery of its own but a squeeze. In provinces where neither left list can win a seat, every vote that moves from the Frente Amplio or Podemos to the PSOE counts; every vote that stays where it is does not. Expect Sánchez to say so, loudly, in the final week, and expect Colau to say the opposite. The size of the right's majority on 29 November may depend less on how many people vote left than on how they split.
Polling Forecast reads every poll in ten countries, corrects for how pollsters have missed before, and turns them into seats. Our forecasts, the polls and our methods are free to explore.
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