Miriam González Durántez has announced that Democracia21 will run in the general elections on November 29 in Madrid and Barcelona. The decision concentrates its first electoral test in two constituencies and places one question ahead of the others: how much support is needed to turn its candidacy into parliamentary representation.
The answer is not a national percentage. To enter Congress, the party will have to meet the conditions of the distribution in each province where it presents itself. And reaching the legal minimum does not equate to having a guaranteed deputy.
The 3% barrier is calculated in each constituency
Article 163 of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime excludes from the distribution the candidacies that do not reach 3% of the valid votes cast in the constituency.
Therefore, Democracia21 does not need to gather 3% across Spain. It needs to surpass that threshold in Madrid or Barcelona to participate in the corresponding distribution.
Then the D'Hondt system is applied: the votes of the candidacies that meet the requirement are successively divided and the seats are assigned to the highest quotients. Surpassing the barrier allows competition, but the result also depends on the support of the other lists.
Why Madrid and Barcelona are the center of its bet
González presented the project on Saturday, October 10, with the intention of later extending it to the rest of Spain. For this first call, precipitated by the electoral advance, it limits its deployment to Madrid and Barcelona and has requested endorsements to run.
The electoral reading of that decision is clear: concentrating support allows contesting a specific provincial result. A small percentage in a national poll could hide a greater implantation in the two chosen provinces; the opposite could also happen if the support appears dispersed outside of them.
That is why an isolated national estimate is not enough to anticipate whether Democracia21 will obtain representation.
Which party can it take votes from?
Presenting a center candidacy does not demonstrate that its voters necessarily come from the PP or the PSOE. To identify transfers, surveys that cross voting intention and voting recall are needed, with a sufficient sample.
It is also necessary to distinguish between attracting former voters from another party, mobilizing people who previously abstained, and capturing new voters. They are different paths of growth and have different consequences on the outcome.
It can influence the distribution even without obtaining a deputy
It is possible, although not automatic. If a new candidacy receives support that, if it did not exist, would have gone to another list, it can modify the competition for the last seats. But the effect changes if those votes come from abstention or are distributed among former voters of various formations.