What If Frente Amplio Pulls Out of the Small Provinces? How Many Seats It Moves and What It Costs

CHA and Frente Amplio (Broad Front) will not field a list for Congress in Teruel. With today's forecast, that changes a seat in only 1–3% of the simulations. Pulling out of every district with five seats or fewer would give the Socialists (PSOE) between 1.7 and 3.6 more seats on average, depending on how many Frente Amplio voters follow them, but it would leave Frente Amplio on the ballot in only 23 of the 52 districts and without free airtime on public media. Even in the broadest case, the majority does not change hands.

22 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español

On Wednesday, October 21, Chunta Aragonesista (CHA, an Aragonese left-wing regionalist party) announced that the CHA-Frente Amplio Aragón coalition will not field a candidate list for Congress in Teruel and will run there only for the Senate, to “avoid vote dispersion” in a context of “extreme polarization”. Izquierda Unida (IU, United Left) of Aragon, a partner in the coalition, rejected the decision and argued for running in all three provinces. Frente Amplio (Broad Front), the coalition to the left of the Socialists that succeeds Sumar, and the PSOE (Socialists) deny having negotiated withdrawals in other provinces: their only known agreement covers joint Senate lists. But this Thursday El Confidencial reported that there are contacts to do the same in districts with fewer than seven seats, such as Cantabria, Almería, Badajoz or Toledo, something both sides had denied the day before. The deadline to register coalitions ended on October 16, so the only route left is for Frente Amplio not to field a list in some provinces. Candidacies can be filed until Monday, October 26.

Is it a decision with an effect or a gesture? We calculated it with today’s forecast: we remove Frente Amplio from different groups of provinces, redistribute its votes and rerun the D’Hondt seat allocation in each of the 50,000 simulations.

Why the small provinces

With few seats, the real threshold to win one is much higher than the legal 3%. By the usual rule of thumb (75% divided by the number of seats plus one), a three-seat province requires around 19% of the vote, and a five-seat one around 12%. Frente Amplio has between 2% and 7% in almost every district with six seats or fewer, and the model gives it no seat in any of those with three or fewer. In districts with five or fewer it has a real chance only in Castellón (17% of simulations), the only one where it exceeds 10%.

Its votes in those provinces do not turn into seats of its own. The question is whether, without its ballot, they would go to another party that can turn them into seats.

Teruel: a gesture

Frente Amplio has 3% voting intention in Teruel (between 1% and 6%), about 2,300 votes. The three seats are currently shared among the conservative People’s Party (PP), the PSOE and, for the third, Vox (58%) and the PP (29%). The PSOE is far from a second seat.

If Frente Amplio does not run and 70% of its voters back the PSOE, some seat changes in 3.3% of simulations; if only 30% do, in 1.4%. In both cases, what changes is that the PSOE takes a seat from the PP or Vox.

If it spreads

We tested three groups of provinces and three assumptions about where Frente Amplio’s votes go: 70%, 50% or 30% to the PSOE; 10% to Podemos where it runs on its own; and the rest stay home.

Ranges: from the assumption that 30% of Frente Amplio voters move to the PSOE to the one where 70% do.

Three conclusions:

• The effect grows much faster than the votes. Pulling out of the 11 smallest provinces leaves 36,000 votes and moves half a seat on average in the best case. Pulling out of the 29 with five or fewer leaves seven and a half times as many votes and moves seven times as many seats, because there are many last seats there that the PSOE contests with the PP or Vox by a few thousand votes: Valladolid, Cantabria, Cáceres, Huelva or León.
• Every ten points of transfer count. In the withdrawal from those with five or fewer, every ten extra points of Frente Amplio voters who move to the PSOE give it almost half a seat more. With 10%, the PSOE gains 0.7 on average; with 90%, 4.5.
• The majority does not change hands. Today the PP and Vox together win 176 seats or more in 99% of simulations. With the broadest withdrawal and the highest transfer, in 98%. A withdrawal moves three or four seats, and the current gap is much larger. It would only begin to matter if the race tightened to leave the two blocs a few seats from the majority.

Where the seats would change

With the withdrawal from those with five seats or fewer and half of its voters moving to the PSOE, the provinces where some seat changes most often are:

Some are unrealistic. In Castellón, the vote we count as Frente Amplio is that of the Compromís candidacy, with Podemos and IU, which is also the only one of these provinces where it has a chance of a seat: it would hardly withdraw. In Álava, Navarre and Lleida it is reasonable to think that part of its electorate would prefer EH Bildu, the PNV or ERC over the PSOE. In our calculation all the transfer goes to the PSOE or Podemos, so there it overstates the Socialist gain.

What it costs Frente Amplio

Withdrawing has costs that do not show in the seat count:

• Free airtime on public media. The electoral law (article 64 of the LOREG, Spain’s electoral law) gives free propaganda time on public radio and television only to those fielding candidacies in more than 75% of the districts in their broadcast area. For RTVE (the public broadcaster), that is at least 40 of the 52. Withdrawing from the provinces with three seats or fewer leaves it at 41; from those with five or fewer, at 23, below the minimum. It would also remain to be seen how the Junta Electoral (Electoral Board) counts the coalition’s different territorial brands.
• The national vote. Withdrawing from those with five or fewer takes away 15% of its votes and one point of its national share; from those with fewer than seven, 22% and one and a half points. It barely changes its seats (it loses 0.3 on average, almost all in Castellón), but it does change the headline on election night and the comparison with 2023.
• Demobilization. A voter left without their ballot does not necessarily vote for someone else. The low assumption (30% to the PSOE, 60% to abstention) reflects that risk, and the PSOE would still gain seats. What we cannot measure is whether the withdrawal also discourages Frente Amplio voters in the provinces where it does run.

How we calculated it

• Forecast. The 50,000 simulations of the altnalysis forecast of October 22, with the same seed as the published one: votes of residents and of those abroad by district and party.
• Withdrawal. In each province of the group, Frente Amplio’s votes go 70%, 50% or 30% to the PSOE, 10% to Podemos (only where it runs on its own; in Catalonia it is inside ERC and in Castellón, with Compromís) and the rest to abstention. Then D’Hondt is rerun with the 3% threshold on valid votes. The other provinces do not change.
• Groups. Teruel; the 11 districts with three seats or fewer; the 29 with five or fewer; the 35 with fewer than seven, the threshold cited in the published reports.
• Sources. CHA statement of October 21; elDiario.es, Público and Aragón Digital (October 21 and 22); El Confidencial, cited by Demócrata (October 22); LOREG, article 64.
• Code. articulo_retirada_fa.py, in the altnalysis repository.