The general elections of next 29 November arrive in Asturias with a scenario shaped by competition between the PSOE, the PP and Vox, which are fighting over a large part of the seven seats corresponding to the Principality in the Congress of Deputies. Just a little over two weeks before the date at the ballot boxes, the latest polls offer different forecasts about the election outcome, although they agree on pointing out that the three parties would maintain parliamentary representation. The main uncertainty lies in the distribution of the last deputies and whether the right-wing bloc will manage to expand its advantage over the 2023 elections or whether the socialists will be able to recover part of the ground they lost.
The surveys published over the past few weeks reflect significant differences between the estimates of private companies and those of the Center for Sociological Research (CIS). While studies such as the one by GAD3 for ABC consider a scenario in which the PP would keep its three seats and Vox would win an additional one, the macro-survey by the public body points to an improvement in socialist results. This disparity makes Asturias one of the constituencies where the final allocation could see relevant changes with relatively small variations in the vote percentage.
In the general elections of 23 July 2023, the PP became the first Asturian political force with 35.6% of the votes and three deputies, followed by the PSOE, which obtained 34.4% and two representatives. Sumar won a seat with 14.9% of the votes, while Vox won another deputy with 12.5%. Those results left four representatives for PP and Vox and three for PSOE and Sumar, a distribution that the parties will try to maintain or modify in the next 29N.
What the latest polls for the 29N in Asturias say: PP, PSOE and Vox
One of the polls that proposes changes with respect to 2023 is the one developed by GAD3 for ABC, whose fieldwork was carried out between November 3 and 5. Its projection attributes three MPs to the PP, two to the PSOE and two to Vox, which would mean that the PP would retain its current parliamentary representation, the socialists would repeat the result of the last general elections, and the party of Santiago Abascal would manage to incorporate a second representative for Asturias. In this scenario, Frente Ampliu, the coalition that occupies part of Sumar’s political space, would lose the deputy it obtained three years ago.
A similar distribution appears in the estimates by SocioMétrica for El Español, which also contemplate a distribution of three representatives for the conservatives, two for the socialists, and two for Vox. If this result were to materialize, PP and Vox would add up to five of the seven Asturian seats, compared with the four they won jointly in 2023. The increase would be explained by Vox’s progress, which could benefit from a higher concentration of the vote among the three main candidacies.
However, the scenario changes in the CIS pre-election poll, published on Thursday, November 12, which places the PSOE in a more favorable position. The study attributes to the socialists a range of between three and four MPs, while the PP would obtain between two and three and Vox would maintain one representative. Frente Ampliu would move between zero and one seat, so it would also not have guaranteed continuity in Congress.
The CIS macro-survey was prepared based on 45,074 interviews throughout Spain, of which 999 were conducted in Asturias, with an approximate theoretical margin of error of 3.2 points for the regional sample. Its results should be interpreted as estimates rather than as a definitive distribution, especially because the ranges of the different parties cannot simultaneously reach their maximum values given that only seven seats are at stake.
For its part, the survey aggregation model of Mapa Electoral, updated on November 14, draws a central distribution of three seats for the PP, three for the PSOE and one for Vox, leaving Frente Ampliu without representation. Its simulations place the popular and socialists in a range of between two and three representatives, Vox between one and two and the left-wing coalition between zero and one. This model is built by transferring the averages of national polls to each constituency, so it does not equate to a poll carried out exclusively among voters in Asturias.
The PP seeks to keep its 2023 victory and the PSOE to regain the third seat
The result of the previous general elections is one of the main references for interpreting current polls. In July 2023, the PP obtained 209,581 votes in Asturias, compared with the PSOE’s 202,280, a difference of just 7,301 ballots that allowed the popular party to surpass the socialists in vote percentage and obtain one more seat.
That result represented a change from the November 2019 elections, when the PSOE had won three seats, the PP two and both Vox and Unidas Podemos had each obtained one representative. Four years later, the popular party regained ground and became the most-voted force in the Principality, while the socialists lost one of their three seats.
The evolution of the vote also reflects territorial differences within Asturias. In 2023, the PSOE went from leading the results in 70 of the 78 Asturian municipalities in 2019 to doing so in 40, while the PP improved its presence in different municipalities. Oviedo and Gijón proved especially relevant: in the Asturian capital, the popular party outstripped the socialists by more than 15,000 votes, while in Gijón the PSOE managed to remain the leading force by a margin of just 622 ballots. The mining basins, on the other hand, continued to be one of the main areas of socialist electoral support.
In this context, the PSOE aims to regain the third seat achieved in 2019, while the PP will try to keep the three representatives it obtained in 2023. The dispute is also conditioned by the evolution of Vox, whose growth could alter the distribution of the last seats without major changes needing to occur in the positions of the popular party and the socialists.
Vox aspires to a second seat and Frente Ampliu bets on its representation
One of the main developments reflected by the polls is the increase in voting intention for Vox, which in the 2023 general election secured 12.5% of the votes in Asturias. The most recent estimation models place Santiago Abascal’s party at around 19% of support in the Principality, a growth that could allow it to contest its second deputy.
However, an increase in the vote percentage does not automatically translate into an additional seat. The Spanish electoral system uses the D'Hondt formula to distribute the representatives of each constituency, so the outcome depends both on the votes obtained by each party and on the difference between the candidacies competing for the last seats. For this reason, Vox appears with one or two deputies in different projections, despite most models agreeing on an increase in its support compared to 2023.
The situation of Frente Ampliu por Asturies can also prove decisive. The coalition, made up of Izquierda Unida, Sumar and Somos Asturies, contests the elections with the aim of keeping the deputy that Sumar obtained in 2023. However, the candidacy faces a different scenario than at that time, since Podemos is running separately, a circumstance that can make it harder to obtain representation in a province that only allocates seven seats.
The fragmentation of the left vote for the PSOE may favor other candidacies in the distribution of deputies, although its specific effect will depend on the final results. The legal threshold to participate in the seat distribution is 3% of valid votes, but in small constituencies such as Asturias the percentage needed to secure a representative is usually considerably higher. This means that a candidacy may exceed the legal minimum and, even so, be left out of Congress.
Who are the candidates for Congress from Asturias on 29N
The Asturian election campaign features several well-known figures from national and regional politics. The PSOE again presents Adriana Lastra as head of its list to the Congress, while the PP has chosen Ángela Pumariega, a city councilor in the Gijón City Hall, to lead its candidacy. For its part, Vox keeps José María Figaredo as number one on its list, after having achieved parliamentary representation in the previous general elections.
In the space to the left of the PSOE, Juan Ponte heads the Frente Ampliu candidacy, while Manuel Pravia leads Podemos’s list. In total, eleven candidacies will compete in Asturias for the Congress of Deputies, with the aim of securing one of the seven representatives that correspond to the autonomous community.
The campaign has also begun with a significant presence of regional leaders. The president of the Principality and general secretary of the Federación Socialista Asturiana, Adrián Barbón, has called for the mobilization of progressive voters, while the PP, led in Asturias by Álvaro Queipo, seeks to carry into the general elections the support that allowed the popular party to become the most voted-for force in 2023.
The start of the campaign was also conditioned by the murder of a woman in Gijón on Thursday, November 12, which led the PSOE, PP, and Frente Ampliu to suspend their respective election kickoff events. During Friday’s session, Adriana Lastra focused part of her remarks on defending equality policies and against sexist violence, while Barbón insisted on presenting the elections as a choice between the political projects of the left and the right.
Participation in the 29N, another decisive factor for the elections in Asturias
Beyond vote estimates, turnout will be one of the factors that will have to be observed during election day. In the 2023 general elections, Asturias recorded a turnout of 71.1%, with 594,442 votes cast, which represented an increase of 5.7 points compared to the previous general elections. At that time, abstention stood at 28.9%.
The PSOE has precisely turned mobilization into one of the pillars of its national strategy. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has called for reaching 75% voter turnout on November 29 with the aim of securing 176 progressive MPs across the entire Congress, the figure that marks an absolute majority. This call comes in a context in which national polls present very different scenarios for the election outcome, with the CIS placing the Socialists ahead and most private surveys giving an advantage to the PP.
In Asturias, voter mobilization could be especially relevant due to the narrow margin between the main parties and the dispute over the last seats. Added to this is that a part of the voters will have to decide between candidate lists that ran together in 2023 and now are presenting separately, a circumstance that introduces new variables into the parliamentary seat allocation.
With the election campaign just begun, polls still do not allow a definitive distribution of the seven Asturian MPs. The different estimates agree on keeping PP, PSOE and Vox as the community’s main political forces, but they differ on the possibility of the Socialists regaining a third representative, of Vox obtaining the second, or of Frente Ampliu maintaining its presence in Congress. The outcome will depend on how the vote evolves over the next two weeks and on the result the ballot boxes on Sunday, November 29.