Spain's November 29 forecast, with and without the 163,020 suspended votes of the 'grandchildren's law'
The Constitutional Court has declined to admit the Ombudsman's appeal, so the interim suspension of the vote of 163,020 people who became citizens under the 'grandchildren's law' stands. From today, our forecast removes them from the roll abroad. With or without them, the central scenario is identical (PP 135, PSOE 105, Vox 66), and at least one seat changes in only 3 out of 100 simulations.
21 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español
The vote of 163,020 Spaniards who live abroad and became citizens under the so-called “grandchildren’s law” remains suspended. The Supreme Court suspended it as an interim measure in early September, at the request of the hard-right Vox and the association Iustitia Europa, and on October 12 it rejected an appeal by the State Attorney’s Office. On October 21, the Constitutional Court declined, by ten votes to two, to admit the Ombudsman’s appeal, as premature: ordinary judicial remedies have not been exhausted. Until the Supreme Court rules on the merits, they will not be able to vote on November 29, except those who show with a consular certificate that they descend from political exiles.
From today, our forecast removes those 163,020 voters from the roll abroad. But the situation could change before November 29, so we have computed the full forecast under both scenarios, with the same 50,000 simulations: everything else (polls, turnout, territorial errors) is identical in each pair, and the differences are due only to those votes.
The two scenarios
| Party | With the suspension | 95% interval | Without the suspension | 95% interval | Average difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PP | 135 | 114–157 | 135 | 114–157 | −0.01 |
| PSOE | 105 | 86–126 | 105 | 86–126 | 0.00 |
| Vox | 66 | 47–85 | 66 | 47–85 | +0.01 |
| Frente Amplio | 12 | 5–22 | 12 | 5–22 | 0.00 |
| Podemos | 1 | 0–4 | 1 | 0–4 | 0.00 |
| Se Acabó La Fiesta | 0 | 0–1 | 0 | 0–1 | 0.00 |
| ERC | 9 | 4–15 | 9 | 4–15 | 0.00 |
| Junts | 4 | 1–9 | 4 | 1–9 | 0.00 |
| EH Bildu | 7 | 2–12 | 7 | 2–12 | 0.00 |
| EAJ-PNV | 5 | 2–9 | 5 | 2–9 | 0.00 |
| BNG | 3 | 0–7 | 3 | 0–7 | 0.00 |
| Coalición Canaria | 1 | 0–3 | 1 | 0–3 | 0.00 |
| Adelante Andalucía | 2 | 0–6 | 2 | 0–6 | 0.00 |
Seats. In bold, the central scenario (the simulation averages rounded to add up to 350). Average difference: seats with the suspension minus seats without it, averaged over all simulations.
The central scenario is identical in both cases, and so are the intervals. In 97.03% of the simulations, all 350 seats come out exactly the same with and without the suspended votes; at least one seat changes in only 2.97 out of 100, almost always just one. The probability that the conservative People’s Party (PP) and Vox together win an absolute majority is 99% with the suspension and 99% without it. When the suspension changes anything, the most common outcome is that the PP loses a seat (in 1.3% of simulations; it gains one in 0.6%), because the PP was the most voted party abroad in 2023.
Why so little? Because turnout abroad is low: in 2023 fewer than one in 10 voters on the roll abroad cast a ballot. The 163,020 suspended voters would amount to about 15,734 valid votes spread across 52 districts: with the suspension, the expected vote from abroad falls from 258,066 to 242,332.
Where a seat could change
| District | Simulations with at least one different seat | Most frequent change (with the suspension vs. without) |
|---|---|---|
| Madrid | 0.76% | PSOE +1, PP −1 (25.6% of changes) |
| Barcelona | 0.23% | PSOE +1, Junts −1 (15.8% of changes) |
Districts where the seat allocation changes in at least 2 out of 1,000 simulations.
Madrid has the largest share of the suspended voters (about 48,000, by our estimate) because that is where the roll abroad has grown the most since 2023, and so it is where a seat changes most often. Even so, it happens in fewer than one in 100 simulations, and the change does not always go the same way: it depends on which party is closest to the last seat in each simulation.
What we do not know
- How many will vote in the end. Descendants of exiles who can prove it are exempt from the suspension, and consulates are reviewing the files. If there are many, reality will lie between the two scenarios.
- Where they are registered. No provincial breakdown of the 163,020 has been published: we distribute them like the growth of the roll of Spaniards living in the Americas since 2023.
- How many would have voted. We assume each province’s 2023 turnout abroad. Voting from abroad requires receiving the documents and mailing them back or dropping them at a consulate.
How we calculated it
These are two full runs of our October 21 forecast, with the same seed and 50,000 simulations each: one with the INE’s roll abroad for the 2026 general election (2,769,645 voters) and one without the 163,020 suspended voters (2,606,625). Residents in Spain do not change. The rest of the method is the forecast’s, described in the methodology. For who these voters are and how the vote from abroad leans, see “Spain’s vote from abroad and the ‘grandchildren’s law’”. Code: articulo_suspension.py and cera_suspendidos.py, in the altnalysis repository.
Sources. Suspension and people affected: EFE, via Diario de León. Constitutional Court decision: El Diario de Madrid and Demócrata.