Spanish elections and politics II: Catalan elections on February 14, 2021

[Skye]

Apparently there is a Spanish version of the Canada/Israel meme, so enjoy I suppose!



I am personally at the quad point between socialist, leftist cuñado, republican and europist

Why are the Basque Nationalists on the far right?

[Skye]

So about electomanía's ElectoPanel... I know it's not the best thing to have around because of the methodology (I think it's an open-access online poll), but they recently began publishing municipal-level estimates. I think it's interesting, even if you just think about the municipal numbers as just "educated guesses". Though they weren't too far off in the Nov. 2019 election.

Anyways, here's this week's poll. It shows the right with a decent lead: https://electomania.es/ep13my20

[Skye]

So... the CIS published its new poll:

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1262754345788960771

I noticed El País's Kiko Llaneras is, again, criticizing the pollster (The thread's obvs in Spanish):

https://twitter.com/kikollan/status/1262739444341174275

To sum up the tweets, he's roughly criticizing the way they are asking the questions, arguing they might be biased.

[Skye]

If they PP loses the majority by, say, one seat, Feijoó is out right? No way they can reach a deal with the other parties I assume?

[Skye]

I'm still accustomed with campaigns where the candidate is the main selling point, so I don't find the Feijóo poster that weird.

[Skye]

I really want Vox to be the key to government. Feijoo is an arrogant nationalist who needs humility.

The VOX people are anything but humble lol.

[Skye]

So I found the Community of Madrid has shapefiles for its region, so now that I barely know how to make maps using QGIS I decided to try my hand around other Madrid maps. This is the November 2019 General election in the Madrid Metropolitan Area. I'm using a key you should all be familiar with. Click on the spoiler to reveal the map:

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

Anyway, the working class red belt is on full display here, while the wealthier northwestern suburbs show just how much they are on board with the Right, considering all of them were over 60% and 70% pro-Right, while none of the red belt municipalities went above 60% for the Left.

Overall, 3 million votes were cast and these were the results:

PP: 25.3%
VOX: 17.3%
C's: 9.1%

Overall Right: 51.7%

PSOE: 27.3%
Unidas Podemos: 13.1%
Más País: 5.8%

Overall Left: 46.2%

All in all, the Metro area voted slightly a bit to the left of the overall Community of Madrid (52.3R-45.5L)

I wish I could have divided the Madrid municipality into districts to further show the vote disparity in the South, but I'm afraid I'm not that skilled yet.

[Skye]

I have this old map of the 2003 Madrid regional elections (the infamous Tamayazo). The municipal districts are displayed within the Madrid mega municipality and the north-south divide can be seen easily. The municipality won by IU is Rivas-Vaciamadrid, the Gaul Village of the alternative left SE of the capital (it's different from nearby leftwing strongholds like Leganés or Getafe)



I have maps in my gallery of old Basque, Galician and other regional elections in my gallery, too

This map is useful. Unfortunately, one shapefile I found also divided some of the surrounding municipalities into districts as well, and good luck mapping those.

[Skye]

Here, I'll help you display the Madrid Breakdown only, while leaving the municipal suburbs intact.

You should have both Layers loaded into QGIS: the one for municipalities and the one for districts. Municipalities is on top of districts.

For both of these go to Settings in the Layer Properties window. Go to Query Builder in the bottom right.

For the Municipal one you want to add: NOT "x" = 'y'

For the district one you want to add: "z" = 'a'

x and z are the field names which should be in the upper left box.

y and a are values in those fields that distinguish everything. Since shapefiles are constructed by govt  or watchdog officials, they often contain distinguishing variables to show where a polygon belongs in the official administration tiers. y in this scenario is going to Madrid, or something similar that uniquely identifies the Madrid city and only removes that from the view. The district wants 'a' to be an  identifier that all the madrid districts have but no others. Most likely this would just be a column that signifies which locality the districts are part of, and you just stick Madrid in for 'a.'

Now join or add the election data to the district shapefile.

If z and a do not exist, you create a new column to act as z and a. Highlight all the districts outside in Madrid using the Select features tool in the upper bar. Then go to the attribute table, and go to field calculator. Create a new field, and be sure to type something like 'Madrid' into the expression box before creating said field. Now repeat the above steps using this new column.

Thank you very much Oryx. This map makes the disparity clearer.

[Skye]

First votes are coming in.

[Skye]

The results page is quite lame. Insted of having, to compare to, the total final vote and share of 4 years ago, they could had the actual vote count of 4 years ago with the current precincts reporting.

It also deceptively (no on purpose of course) list Podemos as a new party and does not show the sharp vote share drop from 2016

Hardly deceptive. It's a different coalition, and usually, official sources will count them as new parties.

[Skye]

So far the results looks pretty good for PP in Galicia.  I assume the count so far as a rural lean?

Correct, I just checked and the cities are way behind in the count (except for Ourense). The PP has nowhere to go but down from here, since in Galicia the cities for the most part lean to the left.

[Skye]

Galicia, 60% in:

Feijóo: 49.7% - 42
BNG: 22.8% - 19
PSdeG: 19.3% - 14
GeC: 3.5% - 0
Vox: 2% - 0

[Skye]

The Vox results are ridiculous, even if it ends winning that cheap seat for Alava

Wait, how did VOX win a seat with 1.9% of the vote. What is the threshold to win seats in Basque Country ?

Legally the threshold is at 3% in any of the three provinces. Vox is above threshold in Alava, the less populated province. All provinces return 25 seats each regardless population

Really? The seats are not proportional to population? Huh. TIL.

[Skye]

With 71% of the vote counted, it starts to become stronger the possibility that GeC will not win a single seat.

Same question.  What is the threshold for winning seats?   I think there are 4 provinces so I would think GeC would cross the threshold somewhere.

5%. Currently (77% in), they're at 4.2% in A Coruña, and 4.4% in Pontevedra.

[Skye]

82% in and the PSdeG is trailing the BNG by an astounding 4 point margin. Needless to say they probably won't overcome it.

[Skye]

Galicia, 90% in

Feijóo: 48.2% - 41
BNG: 23.7% - 19
PSdeG: 19.4% - 15 seats
GeC: 3.9% - 0 seats

[Skye]

Hold up. Over 96% in Galicia and the total vote count is 1.265 million compared to the 1.448 million of 2016. But turnout is up by 5 points since then. Velasco, are you sure the vote by mail is being counted at the moment?

[Skye]

Since the vote counting in Galicia is now progressing at a snail's pace, I mapped the election in the meantime.

First, with the parties that obtained seats:



Second, with broader ideological blocs including the parties that didn't get seats at all.

[Skye]

I'm honestly shocked that Podemos was shut out of the Galician Parliament. It's as if half their voters fled straight to the BNG and pollsters didn't notice.

[Skye]

So now the "voto CERA" has been counted in Galicia and indeed, the PP has managed to take a seat away from the PSdeG. New seat distribution:

PP 42
BNG 19
PSdeG 14

https://www.eldiario.es/galicia/politica/feijoo-mejor-resultado-escano-42-le-otorga-voto-exterior-pontevedra_1_6115019.html

[Skye]

Why September? They're going to put on a show for months only for it to fail miserably. They're probably (obviously?) doing it to denounce Sánchez for a while, then accuse the PP of not being anti-Sánchez enough for not supporting the motion as a way to capitalize the right wing vote. I just don't think it's particularly clever.

[Skye]

I wonder if this is gasoline to the fire that is the Catalonia issue and its upcoming election.

[Skye]

Juan Carlos I could have murdered somebody in broad daylight and he would not have spent a single day in prison.

Trump will be announcing his intention to run for King of Spain shortly after he loses the US election.

As we don't have a written constitution, I don't think there's a clear answer to that. It probably depends upon whether you think the trial of Charles I was legally valid or not.

I'm sure the King would have loved to hear it wasn't legally valid before he, you know, got his head chopped off.

[Skye]

They said they were "neither left nor right" to appeal a broader audience, but Podemos was always left-wing and hyper-political.

To put things from a different perspective, back when Podemos was experiencing their meteoric rise, in Venezuela they were immediately linked to chavismo (the ties existed, after all), talking about "chavistas in Spain" was all the rage in pro-opposition circles back then, and among them, many watched the results to the 2015 election nervously.

In other words, in Venezuela, they were seen as far leftists there from the get-go.