The strange case of a political party that goes from zero to four seats in one week

Winning a seat in a general election is not easy in Spain, even in the provinces where it is easier to obtain them.

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It's important to start by saying that votes don't carry the same weight across Spain. In the last general election (2023), a seat for Soria cost 23,449 votes, but a seat for Madrid required an average of 96,175 votes. Of course, sometimes things happen that some might call miracles, a term I personally prefer to reserve for divine intervention.

This Monday, La Razón published an NC Report poll dated August 4th which assigned all the seats in a new general election to parties that already have representation in Congress. The distribution of the 350 seats in the lower house of the Cortes Generales (Spanish Parliament) was divided among the PP, PSOE, Vox, Sumar, ERC, JxCat, EH Bildu, PNV, Podemos, BNG, CC, and UPN. In its report on this poll, La Razón only indicated possible transfers of votes from the PSOE and Vox to a party currently without seats in Congress: SALF. However, the poll results did not assign any seats to that party.

The most curious thing is that yesterday The Objective published an NC Report poll with a notably different result from the one published by La Razón on Monday, conducted on August 4. The aforementioned media outlet highlights the following: "A poll predicts four seats for Iustitia Europa if it runs in the general elections". The article indicates that these four seats would correspond to the Community of Madrid, where the aforementioned party would obtain 401,637 votes, 11.4% of the total, becoming the fourth largest party in the region. A few hours later, La Razón also reported on this survey.

How is it possible that two polls conducted by the same firm give four sudden seats to a party that had none just a week ago? Perhaps the explanation lies in a relevant detail that La Razón omitted from its report on the electoral survey: according to The Objective, it is "a poll commissioned by the party itself," meaning by the party that suddenly went from zero to four seats. "The poll has surprised IE, which commissioned it to see if there was any hope,", the publication notes. Even more surprised will be NC Report, which gave the party no seats a week ago. The Objective points out that the party ran in the 2024 European elections and obtained 26,611 votes, "but its popularity has since skyrocketed." Judging by the data, it hasn't skyrocketed in two years, but in a single week. Something surprising, to put it generously.

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Photo: Element5 Digital.