PP and Vox would win 212 seats and reopen electoral reform debate

How many seats are needed to change Spain? A newly published poll puts PP and Vox at 212 MPs, a majority that no longer depends on anyone. The Ceuta crisis has not changed the winner of a hypothetical election, but it has changed the scale of their victory: PP remains the largest force, Vox climbs to 67 MPs and the left loses more than forty seats compared to 23-J. With those numbers on the table, the alternative majority to Pedro Sánchez stops being a headline and becomes an uncomfortable arithmetic for the Government.

PP takes 145 seats and Vox soars to 67

The poll's distribution paints a different map from 2023: PP drops to 145 seats, well below the absolute majority of 176, while Vox capitalises on the Executive's wear and tear and nearly doubles its representation to 67 MPs. The sum comfortably exceeds 200 seats and opens for the first time the door to a scenario that until now seemed unlikely: governing without the need for Junts, PNV or Bildu.

At the same time, PSOE would retain 101 seats, a generous figure given the accumulated wear. The left as a whole falls more than forty seats compared to the last general election, with a sum of Sumar, Podemos and other partners that remains far from what they achieved three years ago. The arithmetic is relentless: for every seat Vox gains, two fall from the bloc that sustains the Government.

Reforming the electoral law with an absolute majority: from 5% national to regional threshold

With 212 seats, PP and Vox could not only govern: they could try to change the rules of the game. The proposal most circulated among conservative analysts is to raise the representation threshold to 5% nationally, except for parties that exceed 15% or 20% in their autonomous community. The model is taken from countries like Germany, where Saxony-Anhalt requires that minimum to enter the regional parliament, and which European regulations recommend for other elections.

The effect would be devastating for regionalist parties. With a 5% national threshold, formations like Teruel Existe would never have set foot in Congress. In Catalonia the impact would be double: PSC would benefit because the Barcelona metropolitan area concentrates 40% of the population, while Junts would lose a good part of the seats that depend on Lleida and Girona.

The constitutional lock: 210 seats to touch the Magna Carta

Reforming the Constitution is not so easy. Three-fifths of Congress are needed, that is, 210 MPs, and three-fifths of the Senate. With 212 seats the arithmetic adds up, but here another obstacle appears: it is enough for 10% of MPs or senators to demand a referendum for the reform to be put to a popular vote. That is the real thermometer.

Vox and PP may have the majority, but a referendum on the constitutional changes they propose would, in practice, be a second electoral round. And it is not clear that the coalition wants to assume that risk. The magic number of 212 is one thing; the political will to activate it is quite another.

Scepticism: are these 212 seats real?

There is no unanimity even within the conservative camp. Part of the analysis maintains that the poll inflates PP and that in practice between 15 and 20 seats should be subtracted from that supposed majority. Others directly question that there will be elections before 2031. The recurring suspicion about postal vote manipulation or the grandchildren law—formulated without firm evidence—explains why part of the right-wing electorate does not quite believe the figure.

At the same time, a minority but noisy current proposes restricting suffrage to net taxpayers: leaving out pensioners, civil servants and anyone whose income depends directly or indirectly on public administrations. The argument is that whoever receives a public payroll should not decide who raises their salary, and the same reasoning would also exclude businessmen with public contracts or media that receive institutional advertising. All easy solutions have the same problem: if the criterion is receiving something public, no one is left with the right to vote.

With 212 seats, PP and Vox hold the key to almost everything. What is not clear is whether they will want to use it or whether, as usually happens in Spanish politics, the alliance will remain in the headline and the headline in the poll. Because an absolute majority to change the Constitution is one thing no party has ever had: the will to get its feet wet.