How are elections going in Spain, country in which the king continues to elect the president

Millions of Spaniards will go to the polls this Sunday to vote in the general election and yet no one will know this Sunday who will be the new president. Citizens who have voted in person or who have already voted by mail are not the ones who will elect the president by direct vote, but will define the 350 deputies and 208 senators who will sit in Congress.

The Spanish electoral system is special because the monarchy still exists. Y it is the same king who proposes the president of the Congress, who will remain at the head of the government, after having spoken with the representatives of all the political parties present at the elections. So, how do you define who will govern Spain in the next four years?

In the general election of today the 350 seats of the Congress of Deputies are renewed and they elect the president and the vice-president of the House. Then, in accordance with the Spanish Constitution, the King, after consultation with the representatives appointed by the political groups with parliamentary representation, and through the President of the Congress, will propose a candidate for the presidency of the government.

The one chosen by Felipe VI, who is generally the one with the greatest parliamentary support, will present his political agenda to Congress and demand the nomination, which will depend on the vote of the 350 deputies. To govern, you must first obtain an absolute majority of 176 seats.. If this number of votes is not reached, the same proposal is submitted to a new vote 48 hours after the previous one, with the difference that he can be elected president if he obtains a simple majority ( more "yes" than "no").

In case it does not realize any of the two majorities, a new proposal will be presented, with the same system as the previous one: the king meets the representatives of the parties and they seek a solution. But If two months after the first nomination vote, no candidate obtains the confidence of the Congress, the King will dissolve the two Houses and call new elections with the approval of the President of the Congress..

Given the fact that the results of this year's elections are very uncertain – more than 20% of voters are undecided – it is likely that none of the candidates will reach the majority, although everything will depend on their ability to agree with the rest of the parties and thus achieve the necessary seats.

Pedro Sánchez, current president and leader of the PSOE, is the great candidate for victory at the polls and aspires to stay at Moncloa if he manages to obtain the necessary support, in addition to the one he has already received. can.

On the other side appears the trinomial of right which, according to the latest polls, would not reach the absolute majority. Pablo Casado is confident that he will reach 100 seats and even if he is aiming at agreeing Albert Rivera, did not exclude an agreement with Vox, the party of Santiago Abascalto reach a dream majority. A few hours after the vote, everything indicates that the future Congress will not have stable majorities.

How MPs are elected

The 350 deputies to be elected this Sunday are distributed among the 52 Spanish districts, corresponding to the fifty Spanish provinces and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla.

Each province has a minimum of two seats each – Ceuta and Melilla have one – and thus 102 seats are allocated to the Congress of Deputies.

For the election of the remaining 248 deputies, the Hondt system is used separately in each constituency. This method, created by the Belgian jurist Victor d'Hondt in 1878, deals with allocate seats to the lists in proportion to the number of votes received. In this way, the more populated provinces will have more MPs.

That is to say that Madrid and Barcelona will be the most represented provinces in Congress with 37 and 32 respectively, while cities like Huesca or Segovia will only provide 3 deputies. But to avoid a very large fragmentation of the camera, applications that do not reach 3% of the vote are rejected.

How does the method of Hondt? When the exam is over, the numbers of the votes obtained by each candidate are sorted in descending order in a column. Then, the number of votes cast for each 1 candidate is divided up to a number equal to the number of seats corresponding to that constituency..

The deputies who will be part of the Congress are the most voted after the division. The seats are awarded to the candidates who obtain the highest ratios of the table, in descending order, as shown in the image, which comes from a province where seven deputies are elected.

This system badigns a different "value" to the seats. In the most populous provinces, it is more difficult to obtain a seat, while in the less populated provinces, a much smaller number of votes is necessary.. In the 2016 elections, the PP and the PSOE won seats in Soria, Ceuta, Melilla, Avila, Segovia and Teruel, for example, with less than 20,000 votes, while citizens need 100,000 for each seat obtained to Madrid. .

The D & # 39; Hondt system is used not only in Spain, but also in many other European countries (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Finland, France, Greece, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal , Czech Republic and Switzerland), Americans (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela) and even some Asians (Israel, Japan and Turkey).

How senators are elected

In addition to the new members of the Congress of Deputies, Today, 208 senators are elected by universal suffrage through a system of voting for the candidate, so that senators from different parties can vote..

Voters may choose up to three candidates from provincial constituencies (except two in Gran Canaria, Majorca, Tenerife, Ceuta and Melilla and none in the constituencies of the island).

The remaining 58 senators, out of the 266 who will form the upper house of the next legislature, are elected by the legislatures of the autonomous communities, each community being entitled to one senator, the rest being divided according to the number of inhabitants of each. territory.

According to the National Institute of Statistics, Today, 36,893,976 voters can vote in the Cortes Generales elections, although the average number of people actually voting is 70%. All Spanish registered voters can vote (residents in Spain and residents abroad), while those who can not vote are:

– Those convicted by a final judicial decision to the penalty of deprivation of the right to vote.

– Persons declared incapable by a final judicial decision, provided that said decision expressly declares the inability to exercise the right to vote.

– The internees in a psychiatric hospital with judicial authorization, during the duration of the internment and provided that, in the authorization, the judge expressly declares the impossibility to exercise the right of suffrage .

Following the reform of the electoral law, voters who have canceled their right to vote due to disability will be able to vote.