The 2019 General Election is just around the corner. It will be on April 28 when the electoral colleges of all the municipalities of Spain take out their ballot boxes to vote. Just 24 days before the 2019 Elections are held, most of the studies have already published their polls and electoral polls with the intention of voting by Spanish citizens. It is well known by all that the current Spanish electoral system bases the value of the votes in constituencies that depend on the province and its population density . But, what is really the value of the seats by province and what is the distribution of seats by province of all the communities and provinces of Spain? All this and much more we see below.
First of all, how does the Spanish electoral system work?
The current value of votes in the Spanish electoral system based on the well-known D'Hondt Law depends largely on the provinces that make up Spain and the population density. Currently, the Congress is made up of 350 deputies representing the 52 provinces that live in Spain today . These provinces are represented at the electoral level by what we know as constituencies, and these represent the number of deputies that each province provides to Congress.
As of today, Ceuta and Melilla have one deputy for each constituency; the rest of the 348 deputies are distributed among the 50 remaining constituencies based on population density. This means that the higher the population density, the greater the number of deputies the province in question will host . An example of this is Madrid, with nothing more and nothing less than 37 deputies. At the other end of the coin we find Cáceres, which only has 4 deputies despite being one of the largest provinces in Spain.
But this is not exactly beneficial for Madrid. The number of deputies directly influences the number of votes / seats obtained. And the fact is that the greater the number of deputies in a province, the more votes it will take to obtain a seat .
How does all this translate when casting our vote? Roughly it means that a vote in Madrid has less value than a vote in Badajoz or Cáceres. In electoral terms, it means that a deputy of a certain political party requires a greater number of votes to be represented in Congress in the province of Madrid than in Cáceres or Badajoz.
So how many votes is a seat worth in the 2019 Election?
At this point the question is compelling, how many votes is needed for a seat in Andalusia, Extremadura, Madrid, and the rest of the communities and provinces?
We get the answer from the Europa Press Data Agency.
And how many votes does a party need to have a seat?
The next required question has to do with the number of votes required for a party to have a seat. Recently created parties like VOX and Bildu have it harder to win a seat in Congress as they need a greater number of votes to obtain representation.
Again we refer to the data of the Data Agency to see how many votes it takes to get a seat among the 350 deputies of the current Congress
This is the number of seats per province 2019
As you already know by now, the number of seats per province varies depending on the density of the population of the province in question. This is the reason why the number may vary over time depending on whether the province has increased or decreased based on the celebration of the last General Elections.
Currently, the value of each province is as follows:
- A Coruña : 8
- Alava : 4
- Albacete : 4
- Alicante : 12
- Almeria : 6
- Asturias : 7
- Avila : 3
- Badajoz : 6
- Balearic Islands : 8
- Barcelona : 32
- Burgos : 4
- Cáceres : 4
- Cadiz : 9
- Cantabria : 5
- Castellón : 5
- Real City : 5
- Cordoba : 6
- Basin : 3
- Girona : 6
- Grenada : 7
- Guadalajara : 3
- Gipuzkoa : 4
- Huelva : 5
- Huesca : 4
- Jaen : 5
- La Rioja : 4
- Las Palmas : 8
- Lion : 4
- Lleida : 4
- Lugo : 4
- Madrid : 37
- Malaga : 11
- Murcia : 10
- Navarra : 5
- Ourense : 4
- Palencia : 3
- Pontevedra : 7
- Salamanca : 4
- Segovia : 3
- Seville : 12
- Soria : 2
- Tarragona : 6
- Santa Cruz de Tenerife : 7
- Teruel : 3
- Toledo : 6
- Valencia : 15
- Valladolid : 5
- Biscay : 4
- Zamora : 3
- Zaragoza : 7
- Ceuta : 1
- Melilla : 1