Catalonia Without Aliança or the CUP on the Ballot: Who Inherits Their Votes, and What It Means for Vox, ERC and the Comuns
Aliança Catalana voters split between Junts and Vox, and one in five would not vote or is undecided; CUP voters lean toward ERC and the Comuns. Turnout is not on track to collapse: our model expects it to beat 2023. Vox nearly doubles its share, fed more by former PP voters and non-voters than by Aliança, and between the Comuns and ERC, votes are flowing in only one direction.
21 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español
Two parties will be missing from the ballot in Catalonia on November 29. Aliança Catalana, the pro-independence, anti-immigration party led by Sílvia Orriols, decided in early October not to run in an election it considers foreign, and on October 12 the members of the far-left, pro-independence CUP voted 68.9% in favor of sitting this one out as well. These are not minor absences: in the latest survey by the Catalan government’s polling center (CEO), 10% of respondents said they would vote for Aliança in a Catalan Parliament election, and the CUP won two seats in Congress in November 2019, though none in 2023.
To see what their voters will do, we used the CEO’s raw data: five surveys from February 2025 to October 2026, with 10,000 interviews. One advantage: the CEO’s question on voting intention for Congress does not offer Aliança as an option, so its voters are already answering as if it were not running.
Where Aliança voters go
There is no clear heir. Of those who plan to vote for Aliança in the Catalan Parliament, 20% would vote for Junts in the general election and 18% for Vox; 10% for ERC. Almost one in five would not vote (9%) or does not know yet (10%), and another 14% choose other parties or a blank ballot. Their second choice in a Catalan election points the same way: Junts (30%), Vox (16%) and ERC (12%).
That makes sense given where they come from and who they are. One in four current Aliança voters did not vote in the 2023 general election, and just as many voted for Junts; only 7% voted for Vox. They place themselves at the center-right (5.6 on a 0-to-10 scale, compared with 6.7 for Vox voters), 64% support independence and 90% were born in Catalonia. Among Vox voters in Catalan elections, 12% support independence and 65% were born in Catalonia. They share some concerns but not the national question, and that limits how many of them Vox can pick up.
And CUP voters
CUP voters have a more predictable destination: 39% name ERC as their second choice and 21% the Comuns, Catalonia’s branch of the Sumar coalition. They are few (3% of the voting intention for Congress in the CEO), so the effect is small: if each voted for their second choice, ERC would gain about a point and a half of the valid vote and the Comuns less than one. About one in five would have no one to vote for or would stay home.
Will turnout collapse?
It does not look that way. In Catalonia, general elections usually draw more voters than regional ones, except during the peak years of the independence push: 62.7% of registered voters cast a ballot in the 2023 general election and 57.9% in the 2024 Catalan election. For November 29, our model expects turnout of 70% (between 65% and 74%), seven points higher than in 2023, in line with the mobilization it expects across Spain.
The absence of Aliança and the CUP takes little away from that figure. In the CEO survey, Aliança voters are the only group that stands out: 81% would vote in the general election, compared with 92% to 95% of every other party’s voters. Since they are about 7% of respondents, the gap amounts to less than one point of turnout. CUP voters would turn out at about the same rate as everyone else.
Vox in Catalonia: more votes, different sources
The rise of Vox has reached Catalonia too. In the CEO survey, its voting intention for Congress went from 2.6% of respondents in early 2023 to 8.2% in September 2026, now ahead of the conservative People’s Party (PP). As a share of declared votes, that is 10.6%. Our model, which combines national polls with each district’s history, gives Vox 13.5% in Catalonia, compared with 7.8% in 2023, and about six seats (adding up the median in each province), compared with two.
The nuances are in where those votes come from:
- Mostly from the PP. 16% of those who voted for the PP in 2023 now plan to vote for Vox; in 2023 and 2024, 3% said so.
- From non-voters and new voters. 12% of those who did not vote in 2023 and 12% of those who were too young to vote back then now lean toward Vox. Almost a third of Vox’s current voters did not vote in 2023.
- Little from Aliança. Only 9% of those who voted for Aliança in 2024 would vote for Vox in the general election. Both parties are growing at the same time but among different voters: Aliança among Catalan-speaking independence supporters (66% of its voters consider Catalan their own language) and former Junts voters; Vox among Spanish speakers (only 11% of its voters consider Catalan their own language) and former PP voters.
Colau and Rufián: two sides of the same coin?
Frente Amplio, the coalition of Sumar, the Comuns, the United Left (IU) and Más Madrid, has picked former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau as its candidate. Podemos did not join: several of its members will run as independents on the Barcelona list of ERC, the pro-independence Republican Left, alongside Gabriel Rufián. Are they competing for the same voters?
Partly, and the traffic runs one way. Among 2023 Sumar voters, loyalty has fallen from 73% to 40%, and 19% now plan to vote for ERC, up from 4% in 2023 and 2024. Another 23% choose “other or blank,” which may include people who would vote for Podemos, an option the CEO question does not offer. In the other direction, barely 1.5% of 2023 ERC voters would switch to the Comuns.
The two electorates look alike in almost everything except the national question. Their ideological profiles overlap by 79% (ERC voters average 3.3 on the 0-to-10 left-right scale, Comuns voters 2.7), and their age and birthplace profiles by more than 84%; on independence, only by 53%: 76% of ERC voters support it, compared with 29% of Comuns voters. Comuns voters are more likely to have a college degree (56% vs. 34%) and to live in larger towns.
The relationship is lopsided. For Comuns voters, ERC is as much a second choice as the Socialists (28% each), and they give Rufián a 6.7 out of 10, barely below ERC’s own voters (7.3). For ERC voters, by contrast, the Comuns are only the fourth choice (12%), behind the Socialists, Junts and the CUP. Rather than two sides of the same coin, they are two coins that share a face: the left. ERC can grow at the Comuns’ expense; the reverse hardly happens.
The forecast reflects that shift: in Barcelona, Frente Amplio would fall from 15.2% to 8.4% and from five seats to three, while ERC would rise from 12.3% to 15.4% and from four seats to five. The intervals are wide, especially for ERC (9% to 25% in Barcelona), because the final split will depend on how Colau’s candidacy takes shape and how much of the Podemos vote ends up on Rufián’s list.
Caveats
- These CEO data are unweighted. The figures come from the raw sample (2,000 interviews per survey), without the past-vote weighting the CEO uses for its own estimates. They work for comparing groups, not for estimating the result.
- What people say. How people say they voted and will vote is not how they actually vote; the share who say they “would not vote” usually falls short of real abstention.
- Small samples. Only 141 respondents recall voting for Aliança in 2024, which is why we rely mostly on current voting intention.
- The forecast does not model Aliança’s and the CUP’s absence. The altnalysis model allocates the vote using national polls and each province’s slate of parties, which already excludes these two.
How we calculated it
- Surveys. Microdata from the CEO’s Political Opinion Barometer, waves of February 2025 (1119), May 2025 (1126), October 2025 (1145), May 2026 (1167) and September–October 2026 (1169): 10,000 interviews. For trends, every wave since February 2023. 95% intervals.
- Turnout. General elections: official results for the four provinces, including Spaniards abroad. Catalan Parliament: official results from the Catalan government. Nov. 29: altnalysis forecast for resident voters, converted to a total with the 2023 weight and turnout of voters abroad.
- Code.
analisis_catalunya.pyandarticulo_catalunya.py, in the altnalysis repository.
Background sources (in Spanish): Público, Oct. 5, 2026 (Aliança); Catalunya Press, Oct. 12, 2026 (CUP); El Salto (Colau); El Debate, Oct. 17, 2026 (registered coalitions).