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

[Oryxslayer]

The national PP executive has decided to sack the Basque PP leader Alfonso Alonso. He was opposed to the deal with Cs and was well known for being a moderate inside PP. He will be replaced by Carlos Iturgaiz, a hardliner who was already Basque PP leader in the early 00s.

In any case, this is definitely bad news for PP's already limited appeal in the Basque Country. Why would Casado shoot himself in the foot in this way?

You are probably looking at it the wrong way. You think the point of such a pact is to get more seats in a legislature that PP never has a shot at governing, at least currently. Casado sees the pact as the next step to incorporating the dying C's, so getting everything to work is more important.

[Oryxslayer]

Vox does worst amongst old people - presumably because they actually remember the Franco era?

Don't radical right parties do worst amongst the old throughout Western Europe? It's generally the case that the very young (18-24) and the old (65+) have lowest vote share for radical right parties.

The gender divide being especially large amongst the youth is interesting but I think is also a phenomenon you see throughout the western  world?

Yes, this is because the very young activists prefer Linke/Podemos style parties, and the very old are loyal to the declining Center-Right/Social-Left dichotomous machines of yesteryear.

[Oryxslayer]

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.

[Oryxslayer]

Nice map. Have you found precinct data for regional elections?

Thanks for your input, as well as the added context. Catalan politics is such an exhausting topic lol.

Regarding precinct data for regional elections, the data for the 2017 election is here:

http://www.bcn.cat/estadistica/catala/dades/telec/aut/aut17/caut1004.htm

So as you can see, the data is there, but trying to copy and paste it into excel just brings up a bunch of formatting issues that I simply wasn't able to solve. Maybe it's just that I'm not that savvy with this kind of stuff, but I just couldn't do it.

I trust this can work for you?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PwXVJC36t7l2FF10YrJoAZwXKMZpQjD1/view?usp=sharing

It's not that hard to get into Excel, just need to know how set things up before you paste so it reads the table correctly. Also, can I recommend the next step after your block map? It seems the obvious follow-up would be comparisons of parties within the blocks - PSC vs Comu-Podem, PP vs C's vs VOX, ERC vs JxCAT vs CUP - since they are accepted be tenuous groupings, albeit the best ones for this situation.

[Oryxslayer]

Nice map. Have you found precinct data for regional elections?

Thanks for your input, as well as the added context. Catalan politics is such an exhausting topic lol.

Regarding precinct data for regional elections, the data for the 2017 election is here:

http://www.bcn.cat/estadistica/catala/dades/telec/aut/aut17/caut1004.htm

So as you can see, the data is there, but trying to copy and paste it into excel just brings up a bunch of formatting issues that I simply wasn't able to solve. Maybe it's just that I'm not that savvy with this kind of stuff, but I just couldn't do it.

I trust this can work for you?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QhSAJrQ9DQkYRq6vhHmcdO3R3cXpBrpU/view?usp=sharing

It's not that hard to get into Excel, just need to know how set things up before you paste so it reads the table correctly. Also, can I recommend the next step after your block map? It seems the obvious follow-up would be comparisons of parties within the blocks - PSC vs Comu-Podem, PP vs C's vs VOX, ERC vs JxCAT vs CUP - since they are accepted be tenuous groupings, albeit the best ones for this situation.

Your spreadsheet is pretty much what I had. Here's the thing. There are two spaces after each number of votes in every cell with a vote. So I have to delete the spaces for the program to be able to recognize the numbers. I run a simple formula to do it. Bang, the number doesn't have the spaces afterwards. Yet it still doesn't work I don't know why. I run a formula to calculate the votes but it's like the program doesn't recognize it as number. I've tried messing with the number format but it doesn't seem to work. It only recognizes it as a number after I click on each number in its formula bar. And well, that's not gonna do it lol. I'll admit I'm not an Excel expert, but damn, I was frustrated with this one and just gave up. If you know of any way to work around it, let me know please.

Try the link now. I believe I have solved your problem, and I uploaded a new version.

What you have described is a bit common when you CTRL+C/V straight from older websites. These websites have characters that separate the values which Excel does not recognize and are not spaces. ALT+0160 is the most common. Here's my quick and easy way to clean for these, since excel will do nothing with these characters.

-CTRL+C/V to new Excel Doc
-Remove any Commas/periods in numbers over 1000 with a CTRL-F. This may not be needed, and since they can be added back later with formatting, but I just do it for safety during future steps.
-Save it as UTF-8 CSV
-Open CSV in Notepad++. You will notice that there are characters (might appear as spaces/tabs) which are not numeric, a ", or a comma.
-Copy the characters and select everything in Notepad++. Do a CTRL+F and replace these characters with nothing. You could also remove all ", but it changes nothing.
-When the lines in the Notepad++ doc look like the following, you are done: ,"72","68","104",,,,,,,,
-Ctrl+C/V this into a new excel sheet and it will now work.

There are ways to set things up with a cleaning script to remove these things solely in excel, but this is quicker since you are just doing CTRL+F removals.

[Oryxslayer]

Try to spot a small precinct in Sant Marti district that is light blue in the first map and dark blue in the second. It's an old housing block for national police agents.  The block is a PP bastion in Barcelona and I think it was the only precinct where the party came first in April 2019

I read about this during the election! Something along the lines of "No matter what happens, the PP will always win that precinct". Not sure if it was here or somewhere else.

I wonder if VOX will win that precinct in the future...

[Oryxslayer]

Interesting. And that "document" committing parties to not make deals with PSC, will parties follow it or is it just a BS? Because it seems like a it.

Some people is in your opinion,  adding that document sealed the PSC victory next Sunday.  We'll see if Illa succeeds and how long it lasts the pact against him. The PSC is arguing that deal is the "Colón square picture" of the Catalan nationalists

There's also the implicit assumption baked into that deal that the nationalists will once again get a majority of seats, and 2021 will just be 2017 but with the C's swapped for PSC. If they don't, which admittedly is unlikely but not the strangest thing possible, there would definitely be a push of some kind to avoid a Madrid/Israel situation where no government can be formed. Ignoring everything else PSC and VOX will never work together, so the nationalists failing to get a majority but standing by their pact basically ensures round 2 in a few months.

[Oryxslayer]

Generalitat results page: https://resultados.parlament2021.cat/resultados/resumen/AUCI

El pais: https://resultados.elpais.com/elecciones/cataluna.html

[Oryxslayer]

RTV "Exit" (Late) Poll:

[Oryxslayer]

So yeah two takeaway's if the exits are correct:

- Catalan Nationalists >50%. Potential for a Junts+ERC govt on their own.

- The Ball is in truly ERC's court on what govt gets formed. Pre-election, it was a case of a Junts led govt or a PSC led left govt.

[Oryxslayer]

Showed for a moment, so I snapped a pic. The parties voter base this year broken down by age cohort, according to the exit poll. I don't think theres anything too surprising here.

[Oryxslayer]

Pundits are saying, on TVE, that if ERC wins, Junts is out of government and ERC will make a deal with Cómun and the outside support of PSC. If Junts wins, a government is impossible. New elections? Who knows at this point.

IMO ERC and Junts will just do a deal one way or the other. Then if need be CUP will provide outside support.

Maybe, everything is open. I like the guy, on TVE, who said he's an independentist abstainer, and that it doesn't matter if either Junts or ERC win, there're both liars.

I mean we know that the ERC's base is my more in favor of persuing a legal form of independence, rather than the clean break Junts and Pudigmont pinned themselves to these past few years. It's just that they are duty bound to follow them since Junts leads the nationalist block. If ERC tops the polls, then maybe they'll look for an alternative separate from Junts ideal.

[Oryxslayer]

It's still very, very early, but, IMO, it seems that Junts is not performing very well. ERC seems to be on the verge of surpassing them, with less than 2% counted and PSC continues creeping up.

Which of course is notable cause the ERC does comparatively better in Tarragona and Barcelona when compared to the rurals, and the rurals count faster. Maybe they will pass Junts. There is the possibility in the cards for an electoral fluke, where Junts wins Lledia and Girona and the PSC wins Barcelona and Tarragona, but the ERC wins cause it came in second in all 4. Its very unlikely of course.

Wonderful strategy from the 155 hardliners. Really worked wonders! 15 seats overall? lmfao

The goal for those guys is Spain and Spanish nationalism, not Catalonia. Catalonia is a triagable scapegoat.

[Oryxslayer]

Map of what's reporting right now. Obviously not everything colored in is 100% reporting, or we will be at >70% counted because of Barcelona and her suburbs.

[Oryxslayer]

Just checked on Barcelona (city) and Junts+PDeCAT is down 4% there compared to JxC, more than in rural areas. It's early, but I wonder if at the end of the day we will see that oh so common trend (yes US but its across the west) where the ERC gains from the nationalist voter pool in Urban areas compared to Junts in Rurals.

[Oryxslayer]

Oh and I know we are talking about PSC/ERC/Junts, but the other story is that VOX is right now at 8%. Yes they, and the right overall, has a ceiling and PP+C's+VOX is basically at it, but does anyone know if that percentage goes up or down? More non-Catalan Nationalist votes later on, but they are from urban areas that are not equivalent to Madrid.

[Oryxslayer]

#TrendsAreGlobal



/s

[Oryxslayer]

The PSC is back, but it's a different party.

Back in 1999 and 2003 elections, when the PSC was the leading party in popular vote under Pasqual Maragall (CiU won more seats due to malapportionment), 30% of its base had a predominantly Catalan identity ("more Catalan than Spaniard")

The 2021 PSC under Salvador Illa has lost 2/3 of the catalanist base: only 10% identify as "more Catalan than Spaniard".

The catalanist middle-class has turned to sovereigntism since 2010

To what extent have the PSC taken most of the C’s voters from the last election? The map would suggest that this is basically what has happened.

This is basically what happened among certain voters, but do remember that a good number of these voters were either PSOE/PSC voters previous to 2017 (the Red suburbs around Barcelona for example) or hopped on the train in the 2019 federal elections.

[Oryxslayer]

I was believing that the PSC lead would grow with the late returns but it seems that the opposite happened. Now, what kind of government will come out of this is anyone's guess.

I think the most likely option is  ERC+JxCAT, with Pere Aragonès  as President de la Generalitat and a Junts member as Speaker of the Parliament

I mean the fact the the ERC leads Junts means that there are other options if they want to pursue a different path to independence than Pudigmont's. ERC+CUP (+ECP?) with outside Junts votes for example.

[Oryxslayer]

I mean if I was in in the ERC I would use the threat of alternative govts, which do exist unlike when Junts tops the polls, to squeeze Junts for everything possible. Basically if you force Junts to decide between abandoning the 50% and forcing the ERC explore anything with the PSC, or accepting a different Nationalist govt with their prominence greatly reduced, one assumes that they will go Nationalist every time - allowing the ERC to play hardball.

[Oryxslayer]

Remember the Police housing precinct we were discussing two months ago? Well, PSC topped the poll, but only because VOX and PP split the conservative vote.