This Sunday’s Catalan elections have been gaining uncertainty day by day. The last prediction that the law allows me to publish, with Monday’s polls, left us with a main scenario, but also a 40% probability for other results.
Surveys predict better than any alternative, but they are still an approximation exercise. The key is to remember that errors of four seats or more with some party are not rare. Therefore, I express my forecasts with probabilities. And that is why, in the day before each vote, I write about possible surprises.
Scenario 1. Just add the left
The first possibility is that nothing surprising happens and that the polls are right. As the graph shows, in that case there would be a possible majority between PSC (40 seats), ERC (26) and Comuns (5), which together would add up to about 71 seats, three above the 68 that are necessary. It is not guaranteed that these forces will be understood, but their negotiation would be favored by the scarcity of alternatives.
According to my calculations, there is a 50% or 60% chance of seeing a situation like that, where this leftist tripartite (PSC, ERC and Comuns) does reach the majority, but not the pro-independence sum of Junts, ERC and CUP. In this scenario I also include a PSC success. If the socialists beat their polls by a couple of points, they could try to reach an agreement with ERC and without commons.
Scenario 2. The ERC dilemma
The second scenario is that two majorities are possible at the same time: on the one hand, PSC, ERC and Comuns; on the other, Junts, ERC and CUP. I estimate this to have a 20% probability. For example, it happens if we assume that the PSC does a little worse than what the polls say — it remains at 27% of votes instead of around 29% — while the three pro-independence parties rise in proportion.
It would be a paradoxical situation. Pere Aragonès could negotiate saying that ERC is the key to choosing one government or the other. But at the two negotiating tables he would face a party—PSC or Junts—that surpasses them in votes and seats.
Scenario 3. The blockade
With a 14% probability, the third scenario is that neither of the two main majorities were arithmetically possible. The problem could be, for example, that PSC and ERC did worse (two or three points between them), and that parties that are not in any sum, such as PP, Vox and Aliança Catalana, improved their polls.
What government would emerge from a result like this? It’s hard to say. The key would involve exotic solutions, or ones that contradict what some party has said, such as a pact between Junts and PSC, support from the CUP for the socialists, or an agreement between the independentists and Aliança Catalana. All of that seems unlikely. That is why a blockade and a subsequent electoral repetition cannot be ruled out.
Scenario 4. The Junts flood
The last case is that the only easy majority is the pro-independence party, if the sum of PSC, ERC and Comuns falls short. This happens with probability 9%, again according to my calculations. The easiest way to see it is that Carles Puigdemont continued his upward trajectory of the campaign, and that this coincided with a poor result for the Socialists.
In this example, the PSC would still have more votes than Junts (25.5% to 24%), but would lose first place in seats. The paradox is explained, as so often, by the electoral system: the socialists are strong in the province of Barcelona, which distributes only 63% of the seats, although 74% of the voters live there.
What is the probability that Junts will come first? On the central stage they move around 34 seats, compared to 40 for the socialists. But given the margin of error in the polls, I calculate that Junts has a 20% chance of equaling or surpassing the PSC in the total number of seats. And that’s ignoring their tendencies.
In short, Sunday’s result will most likely resemble the first scenario, but almost half of the time we will see another one. It is easy to bet by saying, “there will be surprises.” The difficult thing is to guess which one.
Methodology. Our calculation of seats results from a three-step process: 1) we start from the vote estimated by an average of surveys; 2) we estimate the vote in each province from that average, using as a reference the results of each party in the 2021 regional elections; and 3) we calculate the seats according to the D’Hondt method. For probability calculations, we incorporate the uncertainty of the surveys taking into account their historical accuracy; and we simulate 20,000 elections. You can read about it here.
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