Vox projected between 32 and 200 seats in Spain's July 23 election

Vox, from 32 to 200 seats: the range of forecasts for July 23

With the July 23 campaign in its final stretch, the projected number of seats for Vox was in an unmanageable range: from 32 to 200. In between, a figure circulating in the thread placed Santiago Abascal's party above 70 deputies. Neither confirmed nor denied, the figure served everyone: those who saw it as low, those who considered it a waste of time, and those who doubted even the count.

The starting point was an electoral call in mid-summer, with postal voting at the center of all suspicions. And an unanswered underlying question: how much real space is left for the right when the message of tactical voting pushes in the opposite direction.

How many seats do forecasts give Vox

More than 70. That was the high reference circulating in the thread, and upon it the rest of the conversation was built. Other projections lowered it to a range of 66 to 70 seats provided there were no irregularities in the count. And third projections raised it without shame: a forecast attributed to the Global Elections History Society and dated July 11, 2023, pointed in the same direction, while an earlier forecast, from June 3, already spoke of at least 75.

The contrast with the low scenario was brutal. The most prudent figure left Vox with 32 or 35 seats, with an argument difficult to refute: on television, the party barely exists and much of the electorate only knows what they see on screen. To calibrate, the result of the previous election was 52 deputies. Going from there to 70 is one thing. Jumping to 200 is quite another.

Tactical voting that brakes Vox and swells the PP

The transfer of votes worked in both directions, and neither favored Vox. A repeated profile: voters who in previous elections had supported the party and who this time went to the PP due to tactical voting, convinced that concentrating votes against the Government weighs more than loyalty. It was not an isolated case: it appeared described in the closest family environment of whoever told it.

On the opposite side, the antiestéticar that Vox enters the Executive also moved ballots, and not precisely towards the right. There were habitual PP voters willing to vote for the PSOE just to avoid that scenario, with a pattern repeated among women. Added to this was a structural calculation: there is not that much space for the right. The PSOE, they assured, will always retain a bag of 100 seats thanks to an electorate that cannot conceive of betraying its working-class origins.

Antiestéticar of electoral fraud and July's postal voting

Holding elections in July, pointed out the most critical voices, multiplies the options for postal voting and, with them, the margin for manipulation. The suspicion extended to the entire process, although not everyone shared it. The skeptical argument was blunt: there are agents from all parties at the polling stations and any citizen can check that what is counted matches what is published.

And postal fraud? It may exist, they admitted, but its weight is usually so small relative to the total that it only alters a result under extraordinary circumstances. With one exception: these elections, by taking place in summer, gave postal voting more relevance than usual.

The arithmetic: 350 seats and very few free ones

The mathematical distribution invited prudence. Of the 350 deputies, a projection reserved 40 for local parties, 100 for the PSOE, 100 for the PP, and 30 for Sumar: leaving about 80 free. But the polls drew a PP and a PSOE well above, around 130 and 120 seats, leaving only 30 available for Vox. A simple exercise that lowered any expectation of a majority.

The territorial detail completed the picture. In A Coruña, 8,000 more votes were worth a seat, and the margin was decided at the cost of other parties depending on their collapse or resistance. Deputies are not distributed by national percentage, but province by province, and there every vote weighs differently.

What happens if Vox approaches or surpasses the PP

Some readings went beyond the count and drew a medium-term scenario: if Vox grows enough, it would end up leading the opposition and the two major formations would end up converging in a bicéphalous block. The idea circulated with sarcasm—names were missing for that hypothetical alliance—but with a serious underlying theme: the coincidence in major policies between the PP and the PSOE is what, according to this analysis, pushes the dissatisfied voter towards the extremes.

In Galicia, meanwhile, the ambition was more modest and more concrete: to snatch a seat in the home province. That objective well summarizes the distance between the inflated expectation and a system that wins seat by seat.

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The analysis gets stuck at the same point where it started: no one knows how many of Vox's votes are hidden. Some maintain that many people will vote for the party without admitting it, fed up with the PP-PSOE axis. Others believe that tactical voting has already done its work and that the ceiling is set. Between 32 and 200 seats fit almost all possible futures.