The PP and Vox are running out of time until Monday, October 26, the day the deadline to register candidacies for Congress and the Senate expires, to finalize a distribution province by province that prevents the dispersion of their voters from taking away seats in the Upper House. Alberto Núñez Feijóo confirmed this Friday the contacts and hinted at the formula that Génova considers simpler, which involves Vox withdrawing where it has no chance of obtaining a senator and the Popular Party compensating them later with positions of autonomous designation.
The negotiation is led by Miguel Tellado, general secretary of the PP, and Montse Lluis, deputy general secretary of Vox, who already sat at the table of the 2023 autonomous agreements and whose team is now contrasting with that of the Popular Party the voting expectations of each constituency to decide where it is worth coordinating and where it is not.
The two parties sat down to negotiate pushed by the agreement that PSOE, Izquierda Unida, Movimiento Sumar, Más Madrid, and other formations reached on Friday the 16th to run together for the Senate in 47 constituencies under the brand “Senado de Progreso,” with lists headed by the socialists and the rest of the positions distributed among the partners, an alliance that threatens to take seats from the right in the most contested provinces and even endanger the absolute majority currently held by the PP.
Feijóo suggests that Vox withdraw where it cannot obtain a senator
The president of the PP, who had spoken directly with Santiago Abascal on Wednesday, defended in an interview on Cadena SER that “it would be logical for Vox in those provinces where it will not obtain a senator to consider the possibility of not running and for the Popular Party to respond to that gesture.” Feijóo, however, avoided declaring the agreement closed and admitted that he still could not offer “truthful and definitive” information, so neither Vox has committed to withdrawing candidacies nor the PP has specified what compensation it would be willing to assume.
Vox has also not closed any doors. Its parliamentary spokesperson, Pepa Rodríguez de Millán, stated that her party is willing to study coordination formulas and make “sacrifices” to reach an understanding, although she was careful to specify in which provinces she would accept renouncing its own ballot.
No possible coalition and three formulas under study
PP and Vox negotiate within the narrow margin allowed by the electoral law, because the deadline to communicate coalitions expired on October 16 and they can only register separate candidacies that coordinate with each other. Sources from the PP consulted by DEMÓCRATA warn that “there are legal limitations when introducing people affiliated with another party within the lists of another,” a caution that weighs on any formula that involves mixing names from both formations.
If Vox withdraws, as Feijóo requests, its voters will be able to concentrate the three crosses on the ballot for the popular candidates where their party does not compete for a seat. The teams of Tellado and Lluis are also studying the so-called 2+1 formula, in which the PP would present two candidates and Vox one, either integrating the latter into the popular list, which requires resolving its legal situation beforehand, or maintaining separate candidacies in which each party asks its voters to complete the ballot with the names of the other.
The PP is also considering a third way, which could be complementary to the other two, consisting of giving Vox some of the senators of autonomous designation that correspond to the popular party, although that distribution is not decided at the polls, but in the regional parliaments, which designate those senators in proportion to their composition, so any concession will depend on the majorities and procedures of each assembly.
Vox, according to the same sources, has set as its first red line to reach the ten senators required by the Chamber's regulations to form its own group. Abascal's party currently has five, all of autonomous designation, but feels strong in some constituencies, such as Murcia, and aims to achieve seats at the polls and leading positions where it shares a slate with the popular party. Neither of the two formations intends, in any case, to apply the same recipe throughout Spain.
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Six provinces away
DEMÓCRATA has simulated the effect of each formula on the Upper House. PP, Vox, and UPN currently sum 149 of the 267 senators, fifteen above the absolute majority, set at 134, and twelve below the three-fifths, which is reached with 161.
If the autonomous parliaments maintain their designations, the bloc needs 133 senators elected on November 29, twelve more than the 121 achieved by the PP and UPN in 2023, and that difference is approximately turning the result around in six provinces.
Popular and Vox negotiate province by province because the Senate is elected by limited voting. In the peninsular constituencies, which elect four senators, each voter marks up to three names and the four most voted obtain a seat, so the party that concentrates the most support usually takes three seats and the second, one.
The two parties only lose seats by running divided in the swing provinces, those in which the PP, by itself, falls behind the left, but not the sum of both parties. In the islands that elect a single senator, like Ibiza or Formentera, it is enough for the bloc to run with a single candidate.
The candidacy of “Senado de Progreso” multiplies those swing provinces, because it brings together in three names the crosses that in 2023 were distributed between socialists and Sumar. With a margin of fifteen seats, the bloc could lose about seven provinces before running out of an absolute majority, and each of them would also subtract elected senators from the PP. In the constituencies where the left does not run united, the popular party alone retains the distribution of three to one and the coordination barely adds seats.
With the withdrawal proposed by Feijóo, the PP would keep the three seats of the bloc as long as Vox voters go to the polls and mark the popular candidates, and that is why Abascal demands counterweights in return. With the 2+1 trio, the right obtains the same result in total, but the third senator goes to Vox, which takes it from the left and not from the PP, as long as the voters of both parties follow a crossed recommendation that neither of the two can guarantee. If Vox, on the other hand, opts to maintain its ballot with a single candidate, as it did in 2019, to avoid disappearing from the province, the PP saves two seats, but the bloc falls far from the three-fifths.
| Formula in a swing province | PP | Vox | Left |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vox runs with a complete list | 1 | 0 | 3 |
| Vox presents a single candidate | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Vox withdraws | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| Trio 2+1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Why coordination in the Senate matters
The electoral system of the Upper House explains the interest of the two parties in reaching an understanding. In most of the peninsular provinces, four senators are elected and each voter can mark up to three candidates on the ballot. The seats correspond to the most voted candidates, unlike the Congress, where the distribution is carried out through a proportional formula.
This system allows a candidacy to concentrate several of the positions at stake. Therefore, when two ideologically close parties present separate lists, the division of their support can influence the outcome. Coordinating the candidacies or concentrating the vote on certain candidates could modify the distribution of seats, although the concrete effect depends on each constituency.
In the island constituencies, the number of senators varies according to the island, which forces an analysis of the possibilities of each territory and makes it difficult to apply a single formula throughout Spain.
The negotiation also occurs after the agreement of PSOE, Izquierda Unida, Movimiento Sumar, Más Madrid, and other formations to run together for the Senate in 47 constituencies under the name "Senado de Progreso". The candidacies will be led by PSOE and the remaining positions will be distributed among the other formations according to the agreed criteria.
This coordination of the left constitutes one of the elements that explain the contacts between PP and Vox. Both parties seek to avoid their candidacies competing against each other in provinces where a different distribution of votes could affect the number of senators obtained.
Navarra, the clearest case
Navarra brings together all the elements of a swing province. In 2023, PP and UPN received more votes in the Congress than PSN, but they ran for the Senate separately and the socialists took three of the four senators, while UPN retained the fourth. Four years earlier, Navarra Suma, the coalition formed by UPN, PP, and Ciudadanos, had obtained three. If regionalists and populars coordinate their candidacies, the bloc can recover two seats in the Foral Community as long as Vox does not present a candidacy that divides the vote.
Unlike with Vox, the PP did close a formal coalition with UPN on time, which will run for Congress and the Senate under the name “Union of the Navarrese People in coalition with the Popular Party,” with a list for the Upper House headed by the former regional president Javier Esparza, in which UPN chooses the first and third candidate and the PP, the second. However, PP and UPN may still need VOX to withdraw to guarantee their chances of obtaining the three senators elected in the foral province.
The Constitutional Court and the own group
The popular party seeks something more than just maintaining the absolute majority they already have in the Upper House. With three-fifths, the PP could choose without the participation of the PSOE the four magistrates of the Constitutional Court whose appointment corresponds to the Senate, and Vox, if it leaves the Mixed Group with its own group, would gain time at the podium, presence in the committees, and resources for its parliamentary activity.
Génova has already tried on other occasions to coordinate with nearby parties, from the approaches to the CDS to the proposal of Spain Suma that Pablo Casado directed to Ciudadanos in 2019 and that Albert Rivera rejected, except in Navarre and Álava, where both parties did run together. Sources from the PP attribute those failures to a lack of political will. Tellado and Lluis are now negotiating on behalf of two parties that shared regional governments from 2022 until Vox abandoned them in July 2024.
Neither of the two parties has yet communicated in which provinces they will apply the agreement nor what compensations each will assume. The lists that both register before Monday will reveal whether the conversations translate into withdrawals, shared slates, or into nothing, five weeks before the general elections on November 29.