What would the Congress look like if your predictions come true? How many deputies would each party get? Espejo Público, Antena 3’s program, has taken notice of the electoral simulator by DEMÓCRATA, a tool that brings election analysis closer to citizens and allows them to take part with their own forecasts.
The proposal turns a common question from any political conversation —"what do you think is going to happen?"— into a concrete exercise: putting numbers to the result that each user expects from the ballot boxes and examining what composition of the Congress it would draw.
Antena 3 adopts this tool on its website and invites its readers to set up their own distribution of the 350 deputies through the 'Participa' button. In addition, it explains that the tool allows users to consult a chart with the average of the forecasts from the other users.
From the debate about opinion polls to your own forecast
The main value of DEMÓCRATA’s tool is in giving the reader an active role. In addition to following the polls and campaign analysis, they can build their own electoral hypothesis: how much one party will grow, what setback another will suffer, or what weight parties with less representation will have.
The electoral simulator by DEMÓCRATA and the electoral score translate those impressions into the allocation of seats. The exercise helps to pin down expectations: predicting a rise for a party also means thinking about how the deputies will be distributed among the other forces.
Thus, an intuition about the campaign becomes a scenario that can be analyzed and checked against other forecasts.
Understanding what lies behind a majority
Building a forecast also makes it possible to get closer to one of the key factors in general elections: the gap between winning and gathering enough support to govern.
The distribution of deputies helps to pose questions that go beyond who will finish first. Which forces would add up to a majority? Which parties could turn out to be decisive? To what extent would a few seats change the balance between the blocs?
That is one of the most useful uses of the proposal: taking the debate from headlines about rises and falls to its possible parliamentary consequences.
Compare your forecast with that of other readers
The possibility of consulting the average of the participants’ forecasts adds another reference point to election follow-up. The user can observe whether their expectation is close to that of all the readers or whether they imagine a different Congress.
The polls reflect the expectations of those who participate. Their interest is in facilitating participation, contrasting scenarios, and fueling political conversation supported by figures.
With this tool, DEMÓCRATA expands its electoral coverage with a service proposal.