A Tale of Two Madrids: 61 Points Between Chamartín and Puente de Vallecas

The province of Madrid elects 38 members of Congress on November 29, one more than in 2023, and the forecast gives about 16 to the conservative People's Party (PP), 10 to the Socialists (PSOE), 9 to the far-right Vox and 3 to Frente Amplio, the left alliance succeeding Sumar. But Madrid does not vote as a bloc. In 2023, the PP's lead over the PSOE was 61 points larger in Chamartín than in Puente de Vallecas; the metropolitan south was tied and the west gave the PP more than half of its votes. Income explains almost everything, including who turns out to vote.

23 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español

38 seats, one more than in 2023

Madrid elects more members of Congress than any other district: the royal decree calling the election (the real decreto de convocatoria) gives it 38 seats, one more than in 2023, because its population has grown. In the last general election, the PP won with 40.5% of the vote and 16 seats, ahead of the PSOE (27.8%, 10), Sumar (15.5%, 6) and Vox (14.0%, 5).

Today’s forecast gives the PP 38.1% of the vote (between 30% and 46% in 95% of simulations) and about 16 seats; the PSOE, 23.9% and 10; Vox, 21.4% and 9 seats, almost double its 2023 result; and Frente Amplio, the candidacy that succeeds Sumar, 8.6% and 3. Podemos, with 3.4%, wins at least one seat in a little over half of the simulations. The last seat is the most contested: the PP wins it in 40% of simulations, the PSOE in 26% and Vox in 23%, with a median gap of about 21,000 votes.

But those figures are the average of a province that votes very differently depending on where you look.

Six Madrids

To see this, we have split the province into six zones: the capital, which holds almost half of the electorate (2.37 of the 4.85 million resident voters); the four metropolitan rings (the south, from Alcorcón and Móstoles to Parla and Valdemoro; the east, the Henares corridor with Alcalá, Torrejón and Coslada, plus Rivas and Arganda; the north, from Alcobendas to Colmenar Viejo; and the west, from Pozuelo and Majadahonda to Boadilla and Las Rozas); and the rest of the province: the sierra, the river valleys and the villages.

The differences are enormous. The metropolitan west gave the PP 56.0% of its votes, with the highest turnout in the province (80.8%). In the south, the PSOE (34.0%) and the PP (33.6%) finished four tenths of a point apart, with the lowest turnout (73.2%). The capital voted like the province: PP 41.8%, PSOE 27.3%. And in the rest of the province, the villages, Vox had its best result (18.6%).

The south is no longer a red belt

For decades the metropolitan south was the PSOE’s great reservoir of votes in Madrid. In November 2019, the Socialists still led the PP there by 13 points, and by 10.5 in the east. In 2023, with the collapse of Ciudadanos (the centre-right liberals) and the return of its voters to the PP, that lead disappeared in the south and flipped in the east.

The turnaround shows in the number of municipalities too. In April 2019, the PSOE won 106 of the province’s 179 municipalities; in November of that year, 68, with Vox winning 61; in 2023, the PP won 158 and the PSOE only 19.

One city, two halves

Within the capital, the dividing line is not between center and periphery but between north and south. In 2023 the PP won 17 of the 21 city districts (distritos); the PSOE won only four in the southeast: Puente de Vallecas, Villaverde, Usera and Villa de Vallecas.

In Chamartín, the PP won 59.0% and the PSOE 15.3%: a lead of 43.7 points. In Puente de Vallecas it was the other way around: the PSOE won 40.8% and the PP 23.5%, a 17.2-point lead for the Socialists. Between the two extremes there are 61 points of margin, in the same city and a few kilometers apart. Turnout followed the same line: 81.0% in Chamartín and 64.3% in Puente de Vallecas.

Moreover, the change from 2019 to 2023 was not the same everywhere. The PP’s margin improved by 18 to 20 points in Hortaleza, Barajas, Fuencarral and Chamartín, and by 6 to 9 in Puente de Vallecas, Villaverde and Centro. The two halves of the city grew further apart. The left of the PSOE, by contrast, had its best result in the Centro district (29.1%), followed by Puente de Vallecas (23.4%) and Arganzuela (22.9%).

Income explains almost everything

If the capital’s 2,450 census tracts are ranked by the average household income and grouped into ten equal bands (deciles), the vote draws an almost perfect staircase.

In the poorest 10% of tracts (about 28,800 euros average household income), the PSOE won 41.6% and the PP 25.1%. In the richest 10% (94,000 euros), the PP won 63.4% and the PSOE 12.2%. The PP’s lead goes from −16.5 to +51.3 points. Vox stays around 11% across almost the whole staircase and rises to 17.0% in the richest band. The left of the PSOE hovers around 20% in the first six deciles and falls to 6% in the highest.

Income changes not only whom people vote for, but how many of them vote.

In the capital, turnout goes from 58.1% in the poorest decile to 83.5% in the richest: for every 100 voters on the rolls, the richest neighborhoods contribute 25 more votes. In the rest of the province the staircase is similar, from 65.2% to 82.6%. That turnout gap is, by itself, an advantage for the parties that win in wealthy areas.

What the forecast says for November 29

Our forecast is not computed zone by zone, but it can be allocated. For each municipality, we shift its 2023 vote until it matches the provincial forecast, with noise specific to each municipality; for the capital’s districts, we apply to all of them the same shift as for the city.

On those numbers, the south leans narrowly to the PP (31.8% against the PSOE’s 29.3%), the east gives it a 7-point lead and the west stays at 50%. The most striking result is in the villages: Vox, at 27.5%, would come second, ahead of the PSOE (21.3%). In the capital, the PSOE would still lead in Puente de Vallecas, Villaverde and Usera, and Villa de Vallecas would be tied.

In 24 municipalities the favorite differs from the 2023 winner: in 14, all with fewer than 30,000 voters, it goes from the PP to Vox; in 8, from the PSOE to the PP; in 2, from Sumar to the PP. Among the big southern cities, Getafe leans to the PP (55% of simulations) and Leganés is up in the air, while Fuenlabrada (65%) and Parla (61%) stay on the PSOE’s side.

Lead: points over the runner-up in 2023. "First in": share of 4,000 simulations in which the favorite finishes first in the municipality.

These are rough estimates: they assume each municipality and each district moves like its province, with its own margin of error, and they ignore local candidacies or dynamics. They serve to show where the battle is, not to predict a specific neighborhood.

How we calculated it

• Results. Polling-station votes from Spain’s Interior Ministry for 2008 to 2023, summed by census tract, municipality, district and zone, excluding the vote of residents abroad, and validated against the official gazette (BOE) totals.
• Zones. Metropolitan south: Alcorcón, Fuenlabrada, Getafe, Humanes de Madrid, Leganés, Móstoles, Parla, Pinto and Valdemoro. East: Alcalá de Henares, Arganda del Rey, Coslada, Mejorada del Campo, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, San Fernando de Henares, Torrejón de Ardoz and Velilla de San Antonio. North: Alcobendas, Algete, Colmenar Viejo, San Sebastián de los Reyes and Tres Cantos. West: Boadilla del Monte, Majadahonda, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Las Rozas, Torrelodones, Villanueva de la Cañada, Villanueva del Pardillo and Villaviciosa de Odón. This is our own grouping, inspired by the usual metropolitan rings.
• Families. The left of the PSOE groups IU, Podemos, Más País and Sumar depending on the election; Ciudadanos did not run in 2023.
• Income. Average net household income of each census tract, from the INE’s Household Income Distribution Atlas.
• Forecast. Today’s provincial forecast, allocated across municipalities by shifting their 2023 vote on a logistic scale until it matches the provincial mean, with municipal noise (4,000 simulations); zones are the average of their municipalities weighted by voters. Districts: the same shift as the city for all of them.
• Code. articulo_circ.py 28 and articulo_zonas.py 28, in the altnalysis repository.