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Another 2011? The Right Does Not Need Anyone to Cross: It Is Enough for Part of the Left to Stay Home

In 2011 the PSOE lost 4.3 million votes and the PP gained only 600,000, and still won 186 seats. The absolute majority was not made by transfers; it was made by abstention. The model already sees a PSOE that keeps 67 of every hundred of its 2023 voters, a proportion close to 2011's, and that compensates with 2023 abstainers and Sumar voters. If it lost another 20% of its vote before November 29 without a single voter crossing to the PP, PP and Vox would go from 199 to 211 seats. A PSOE vote that stays home is worth almost twice as much to the right as a Frente Amplio vote that switches to the PSOE. And the only scenario that takes the majority from PP and Vox is the mirror image: three to four million of their voters not turning out. No poll sees it.

25 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español

This is the second of two articles on the precedents each bloc has in mind. The first dealt with the 2008 the left is waiting for: a concentration of the vote in the PSOE (the Socialists) that, calculated on today’s forecast, has already largely happened and is not enough to change the majority. This one deals with the 2011 the right is waiting for, and with the mirror image that almost nobody looks at.

The premise is the same: the blocs are watertight and the vote moves within them. In 2011 something happened that fits that premise better than is usually remembered.

What 2011 was

The PSOE went from 11.29 million votes in 2008 to 7.00 million in 2011: it lost 38% of its voters and 59 seats, from 169 to 110. The conservative People’s Party (PP) won 186 seats, the widest absolute majority since 1982, with 10.87 million votes, only 590,000 more than in 2008. Its share rose from 39.9% to 44.6% because the denominator shrank, not because the numerator grew. Turnout fell five points, from 73.9% to 68.9%. Izquierda Unida (IU, United Left) went from 0.97 to 1.69 million and from 2 to 11 seats; UPyD, a centrist party, from 0.31 to 1.14 million and from 1 to 5.

The post-election study by the CIS (the public polling institute) shows where the 2008 Socialist voters went: of every hundred, around 60 repeated, about 15 abstained, a dozen went to IU or UPyD, between five and eight voted PP and the rest scattered. The direct leak to the PP existed, but it was the smallest of the three exits. What gave the PP 186 seats was that the PSOE was left without 4.3 million votes, and that in each province the Socialist quotients dropped until the last seats went to the PP.

Today’s PSOE, seen from 2011

The CIS layer of our model says the PSOE keeps 67 of every hundred of its 2023 voters. Of the remaining 33, 12 abstain, 7 go to Frente Amplio (Broad Front, the coalition to the left of the Socialists that succeeds Sumar) or Podemos, 7 go to the PP or Vox, and 6 to other parties or blank ballots. It is an exit structure similar to 2011’s, somewhat milder: then it kept 60, now 67; then 15 abstained, now 12; the leak to the right is similar.

The difference is the entrance. The PSOE of 2011 collected nothing. The PSOE of 2026 collects 1.35 million people who abstained in 2023, 440,000 Sumar voters, 270,000 new voters and 170,000 naturalised citizens, and with that it stays at 7.15 million votes, close to the 7.82 million of 2023 including the Catalan Socialists. The 2011 is already under way at the exit door; what offsets it is the entrance door. And the entrance door is, by two thirds, people who did not vote in 2023 and who say they will now. It is the least certain vote of all.

If the exit continues and the entrance fails

We simulated the PSOE losing, between now and November 29, an additional 10%, 20% or 30% of the vote the forecast gives it today, equally in every province, in three ways:

What PP and Vox gain or lose if one of the blocs demobilisesMean change in PP and Vox seats from today's forecast (199), in 20,000 simulations. Fraction of the origin party's vote that moves, the same in every district.

PSOE demobilises with nobody crossing: 60% abstention, 40% Frente Amplio or Podemos

Loses 10% of its vote+6.1
Loses 20% of its vote+12.2
Loses 30% of its vote+18.6

As in 2011: 40% abstention, 40% Frente Amplio or Podemos, 20% PP

Loses 10% of its vote+7.3
Loses 20% of its vote+14.6
Loses 30% of its vote+22.1

Symmetric: PP and Vox demobilise, 70% abstention, 30% to the other party

Loses 10% of its vote−7.2
Loses 20% of its vote−15.1
Loses 30% of its vote−24.0

With a PSOE that loses 20% of its vote, 1.4 million, without a single voter crossing, PP and Vox go from 199 to 211 seats. With 30%, 2.1 million, to 217. The PSOE falls from 107 to 86 seats in the first case and to 75 in the second; Frente Amplio picks up 6 and 10. The PP–Vox absolute majority, which today occurs in 98% of simulations, rises to 99.9%.

If in addition 20% of what the PSOE loses crosses to the PP, as in 2011, the right reaches 213 and 221. The direct leak adds 2 seats with a 20% loss and 4 with a 30% loss. It is not what decides. What decides is abstention: when the Socialist voter stays home, the PSOE’s quotient drops and the last seat in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Alicante or Málaga goes to the PP or Vox without anyone having voted for them.

Who gains and who loses seats when a bloc demobilisesMean change in seats by party from today's forecast, in 20,000 simulations. Only parties with a change of at least 0.3 seats.

The PSOE loses 20% of its vote with nobody crossing (1.4 million votes)

PP+7.8
PSOE−20.8
Vox+4.5
Frente Amplio+5.9
Podemos+0.6
ERC+0.4
Junts+0.4
EH Bildu+0.4
PNV+0.3

PP and Vox lose 20% of their vote (2.7 million votes)

PP−14.5
PSOE+10.8
Vox−0.6
Frente Amplio+1.7
ERC+0.4
Junts+0.3
BNG+0.4

The four channels, measured

To compare the scenarios of this article and the previous one we calculated how many seats PP and Vox gain or lose per million votes that move, depending on the channel they move through.

What each million votes is worth depending on how it movesSeats PP and Vox gain (+) or lose (−) per million votes moved, in 20,000 simulations on today's forecast. Concentration (2008) with 25% of the origin vote; demobilisation (2011) with 20%; direct crossing with 10%.

Seats PP and Vox gain or lose per million votes that move

Frente Amplio and Podemos → PSOE−4.7
The above plus ERC, EH Bildu and BNG → PSOE−3.9
Vox and SALF → PP+0.6
PSOE → abstention (60%) and Frente Amplio or Podemos (40%)+8.6
PSOE → abstention, Frente Amplio, Podemos and PP (20%), as in 2011+10.2
PP and Vox → abstention (70%) and the other party (30%)−5.7
PSOE → PP, nothing else+18.3

The asymmetry is the key to the campaign. With watertight blocs, the right gains seats if the left abstains and loses them if it abstains itself, but the exchange is not one for one: per million, the PSOE’s demobilisation yields the right more than its own costs it.

The mirror: the only thing that changes the majority

Of all the scenarios in the two articles, only one takes the absolute majority from PP and Vox: the mirror image of 2011. If PP and Vox lost 10% of their vote, 1.3 million, they would drop to 192 seats and the majority would hold in 93% of simulations. With 20%, 2.7 million, they would drop to 184 and the majority would stand at 79%. With 30%, four million, they would be left at 175, just below, with the majority at 48%. And even then there would be no alternative: the bloc of the 2023 investiture would reach a median of 171 seats and a majority in 34% of simulations.

A 30% demobilisation is not unheard of: it is what happened to the PSOE in 2011. But it happened to a governing party with five million unemployed. What would be needed in 2026 is for it to happen to the opposition, on the eve of a victory the polls have been giving it for two years. There is no precedent for that in Spain, and the CIS does not see it: in the latest barometers, 85% of 2023 PP voters and 84% of Vox voters say they will certainly vote. Among PSOE voters it is 89% and among Sumar voters 91%. Declared intention to turn out is today somewhat higher on the left than on the right, the opposite of what a 2011 would require and also of what its mirror image would require.

Where it is played

The provinces where some seat changes most often in the watertight 20% scenario are Barcelona and Madrid (in every simulation), Valencia (87%), Seville (75%), Alicante (70%), Málaga (64%), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (59%) and Las Palmas (57%). They are the big ones, because that is where the PSOE has several seats to lose and where the allocation is most sensitive to quotients. In Barcelona, the seat the PSOE loses goes to Frente Amplio in 99% of simulations, but also to the PP in 26%, to ERC in 25% and to Vox in 21%: one PSOE seat is lost and more than one is gained among the others, because the PSOE had more than one at stake there.

In the mirror image the provinces are almost the same, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Alicante and Málaga, with two additions that do not appear on the other side: A Coruña and Pontevedra, where the PP has wide majorities with tight quotients on the last seat and where demobilisation is collected by the PSOE or the BNG (Galician nationalist left).

Conclusion

Both blocs are waiting for things that are not in the data. The left is waiting for a 2008, a concentration that has already taken place and that, even if it went further, does not close the gap. The right is waiting for a 2011, a Socialist collapse that at the exit door is already happening and that the PSOE offsets, for now, with an entrance door made of 2023 abstainers. If that entrance fails, the PP–Vox majority widens without anyone crossing. If what fails is the right’s turnout, and only if it fails on a 2011 scale, the majority disappears. With watertight blocs, November 29 is not decided by who changes sides. It is decided by who stays home, and today the polls’ answer to that question is the one that suits the left least: its reserve of votes lies among those who did not vote last time.

How we calculated it