The territorial average of polls places the socialists close to 19 deputies in Andalusia and 17 in Catalonia. The PSC would keep first place, while the Andalusian PSOE faces a double competition: the PP is disputing the victory with it and Adelante Andalucía aspires to enter Congress. The railway crisis touches the community closely because of Adamuz and because of the Madrid-Seville line, where the Urda accident occurred.
Andalusia and Catalonia delivered to Pedro Sánchez 40 of his 121 deputies in the elections of July 23, 2023. The paradox is that his largest granary was not the community where he won. The PSC prevailed in Catalonia and obtained 19 seats. The PSOE came second in Andalusia, behind the PP, but got 21 and saved the day by staying close to the populares. One in three socialist deputies came from these two territories.
What would the PSOE retain on 29N?
Demócrata has compared two of the studies that allow the socialists to be tracked in the same twelve provinces: the Sigma Dos map from October and the SocioMétrica breakdown published on November 2. The average yields 18.5 deputies in Andalusia and 16.75 in Catalonia: 35.25 in total, about 35 compared with the 40 of 23J. Andalusia would continue to contribute more representatives, but Catalonia would offer the PSOE something it would not have in its main granary: victory.
Andalusia: the PP pulls away, Vox closes in and Adelante seeks its own seats
SocioMétrica assigns the PP 26 of the 60 Andalusian deputies, compared with 18 for the PSOE, 14 for Vox and two for Adelante Andalucía. On 23J, the populares led the socialists by four seats, 25 to 21. Now they would take eight. Behind, the opposite happens: Vox, which finished twelve deputies behind the PSOE in 2023, would stand only four away. In this projection, Andalusia is the community where the socialists would lose the most seats compared with the last general elections: three.
The Sigma Dos map explains why the PSOE can lose Andalusia and still depend so much on it. In Seville it gave it four or five deputies, compared with four for the PP. In Málaga the relationship was reversed: five populares and three socialists. And in Almería the PP got three to one for the PSOE. Adding the eight provinces together, the socialists reached between 18 and 20 representatives. That estimate was published on October 19, before Urda: the Andalusian wear and tear was already appearing in the polls.
Adelante Andalucía introduces a dispute that is seen better on the provincial map than in the national percentage. Sigma Dos was giving it options of getting one deputy in Cádiz and another in Seville, with a range of zero to one in each province. These are precisely the two constituencies where it also left open the socialist result: two or three in Cádiz and four or five in Seville. SocioMétrica does assign two Andalusian seats to Adelante.
From Adamuz to Urda: why the railway crisis hits close to home in Andalucía
Adamuz is in Córdoba. Urda is in Toledo, but the accident of October 28 occurred on the Madrid-Seville high-speed line. For Andalucía, the link goes beyond the memory of the first incident. After the Urda collision, the high-speed connection with Madrid was interrupted and Renfe announced alternative transport. Two of the assistance points for those affected were set up in Andalusian stations: Santa Justa, in Seville, and Julio Anguita, in Córdoba. The Junta declared three days of official mourning.
There are, therefore, geographical and human reasons for railway safety to occupy its own place in the Andalusian campaign. What there is not is a measurement that allows it to be given a price in deputies. Sigma Dos carried out the interviews for its provincial map from October 1 to 14. SocioMétrica published its breakdown after Urda, but its tracking accumulates responses since September. The nearly five-seat difference shown by the average of both pools is calculated against the 2023 ballot boxes, not against the eve of the accident.
Catalonia: the PSC would remain first and the CEO still sees it as possible to repeat the 19 of 23J
In Catalonia, the question is different: how many deputies can the PSC lose without ceasing to win clearly? SocioMétrica grants it 17, eight more than ERC-Podemos, which would obtain nine. The PP would be third with eight, Vox and Junts would tie at six and the Frente Amplio would get two. Catalonia would be the only community in which the socialists would finish first in that poll.
Sigma Dos was arriving at a similar figure province by province: 11 socialist deputies in Barcelona, two in Girona, one or two in Lleida and two in Tarragona. In total, 16–17. The barometer of the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO), carried out among 2,000 people in Catalonia, was more favorable: it attributed 18–19 to the PSC and 10–11 to ERC. Its fieldwork ended on October 5, before the closing of the alliances. If the CEO is added only to the Catalan comparison, the average rises from 16.75 to 17.3. The reading hardly changes: the PSC is around 17 deputies, although one of the three studies does consider that it may keep the 19 from 23J.
Can its two strongholds cost Sánchez the elections?
The five national polls published on November 1 and 2 place the PSOE between 24.6% and 26.6% of the vote. The Demócrata average is 25.7% and about 103 seats. That average serves as context, but to know how much the territorial setback weighs it is advisable to do the calculation within the same poll.
SocioMétrica makes this possible: of the 15 deputies that the PSOE would lose in Spain, five would correspond to its two strongholds, three in Andalucía and two in Catalonia. Even if it recovered the five and everything else remained the same, it would go from 106 to 111, still ten below the 121 of 2023. Andalucía and Catalonia explain a third of the decline that this house depicts. They also explain what Sánchez still retains: despite the losses, it would still obtain in both communities one in every three deputies of its group.