Cantabria: Vox Is No Longer Fighting for the Fifth Seat; the PSOE and the PP Are

Three years ago Cantabria's fifth seat went to Vox by 403 votes. On November 29 the forecast gives Vox at least one seat in 99% of simulations and leaves the fifth between the Socialists (PSOE), who win it in 51% of simulations, and the conservative People's Party (PP), in 39%, with a median gap of about 15,000 votes. The central split repeats 2023's: two for the PP, two for the PSOE and one for Vox.

25 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español

Cantabria elects five members of Congress, and in the 2023 general election it split them this way: two for the PP (42.1% of the vote), two for the PSOE (33.3%) and one for Vox (14.1%). Sumar, with 8.5%, won no seat. Vox’s was the last seat to be allocated, and it won it by 403 votes over the PP’s third: the narrowest margin of 2023 anywhere in Spain after Girona (285 votes). If 101 votes had moved from Vox to the PP, the seat would have changed hands. It is an extreme case of what we describe in “Small Ones Matter (II)”, where Cantabria is one of eight provinces analyzed, and of what we track on the last seat page.

Seven elections, a last seat that keeps changing

The PP has been the most-voted party in six of the seven elections since 2008, but the seat split almost never repeats. In 2008 and 2011 the PP won 50.0% and 52.2%, with three and four seats. In 2015 and 2016 the vote split four ways: Ciudadanos (15.2% and 14.4%) and the parties to the PSOE’s left (22.3% and 17.7%) took one seat each, and the PP fell to two. In April 2019 the PSOE won with 25.2%, and the PRC, inside “others” (15.9%), won a seat; in November 2019 “others” rose to 22.0% and Vox won its first seat with 14.9%.

The last seat, the one that takes the fewest votes to move, has changed party four times: PP (2008 and 2011), Ciudadanos (2015 and 2016), PSOE (April 2019), PP (November 2019) and Vox (2023).

The forecast: the fifth seat, between the PSOE and the PP

The model gives the PP 38.8% of the vote (between 30.0% and 47.9% in 95% of simulations), the PSOE 27.7% (20.3–35.9%), Vox 21.2% (14.9–28.5%), Frente Amplio, the successor to Sumar, 4.5% (1.9–8.8%), Podemos, which the model treats as running separately, 2.8% (1.0–6.4%) and SALF 1.9% (0.7–4.3%). The 2026 slate of parties in each province is still an assumption: it will be confirmed with the proclaimed candidacies on November 3.

Four seats are almost settled: two for the PP (99.6%), one for the PSOE (100%) and one for Vox (99.1%). The fifth is the one in play: the PSOE wins it, with its second seat, in 51% of simulations; the PP, with its third, in 39%; and Vox in 10%. In the central split, the PSOE has two seats in 59% of simulations and one in 41%; the PP has two in 64% and three in 35%; Vox has one in 93% and two in 6%. Frente Amplio wins no seat in 99.7%.

The median gap between whoever wins the fifth seat and its closest rival is about 15,000 votes (6,700 to 27,200 between the first and third quartiles). That is wider than the 403 votes of 2023, but in a province where 355,000 people voted it is still a small margin.

Turnout

In 2023, 75.4% of electors resident in Spain voted; including residents abroad (CERA), who vote very little, turnout over the total electoral roll was 69.9%. For November 29 the model expects turnout of 77.0% of residents (between 71.7% and 81.9%). Since 2008, turnout among residents in Cantabria has ranged from 70.8% in November 2019 to 78.3% in 2008.

Town by town

Cantabria has 102 municipalities. In 2023 the PP won 85 and the PSOE 17, a much more uniform map than in April 2019 (46 for the PP, 40 for the PSOE and 16 for others) or November 2019 (56, 15 and 31). Since 2008, 60 of the 102 municipalities have changed winner at least once, and 37 did so between November 2019 and 2023 alone.

For November 29, the municipal estimate makes the PP the favorite in 93 municipalities (24 solid, 59 leaning and 10 toss-ups), the PSOE in 8 (5 leaning and 3 toss-ups) and Vox in one (Cieza, a toss-up with 478 voters). Ten would change winner: nine from the PSOE to the PP and one from the PP to Vox. Among the large towns, Santander remains the PP’s (97%), with an estimated 41.6%; Castro-Urdiales the PSOE’s (95%, leaning); and Camargo the PP’s (89%). Torrelavega is the closest of the large towns: the PSOE leads, but with only a 53% probability. Los Corrales de Buelna (62%) and Colindres (64%) would move from the PSOE to the PP, and El Astillero, which in 2023 ended in an exact tie between the PP and the PSOE (36.9% each), leans to the PP (67%).

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 start from each municipality’s 2023 vote, shift it to match the provincial forecast and add an error of its own, larger the smaller the municipality. They do not include local candidacies or the dynamics of each town.

The Senate

In the Senate, Cantabria elects four senators and each voter can mark up to three names. Under the current assumption of a joint PSOE and Frente Amplio list, the model gives the PP three senators in 74% of simulations and the joint list one in 70%. The most likely split is 3-1 for the PP (70%); 2-2 comes up in 13% and 1-3 in 11%, and in 4% the fourth senator is Vox’s. This is an assumption that depends on the final lists.

The 2024 European election: a different contest

In the 2024 European election, a second-order contest with different lists, turnout and reasons for voting, Cantabria gave SALF (Se Acabó La Fiesta) 5.7% of valid votes (14,651 votes), more than in La Rioja (3.7%) or Asturias (3.3%); Sumar 3.2% (8,127), and Podemos 2.7% (7,018). That signal does not carry over unchanged to a general election: the model only uses the European election’s territorial profile to spread the national SALF and Podemos vote across provinces, in equal parts with the CIS profile. That is why the forecast for SALF in Cantabria (1.9%) is far below its 2024 result.

Who votes in Cantabria

Cantabria has 599,056 residents. Its population is old, though less so than Asturias’s: there are 234 people aged 65 and over for every 100 under 15 (171 in Spain), and 25.2% of the population is 65 or older (21.2% in Spain). 20.6% live in municipalities of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, almost double the share for Spain as a whole (11.8%).

Net income per person (€16,068) is almost the same as Spain’s (€15,948), but per household it is lower (€38,766 vs. €40,605). Foreign citizens are 8.9% of the population, against 14.9% in Spain, and industry employs 16.2% of workers (13.6% in Spain).

How we calculated it

• History. Official general election results (BOE) from 2008 to 2023, by party family. Municipal results come from the Interior Ministry’s polling-station data and, adding the overseas vote, match the BOE totals in all seven elections.
• Last seat. New votes the closest rival would have needed to take the seat from the last winner, using each election’s official results.
• Provincial forecast. altnalysis’s forecast of October 24 (50,000 simulations, with polls up to October 16). Figures in parentheses are 95% intervals across simulations. The 2026 slate of parties is an assumption until the proclaimed candidacies.
• Municipal estimate. 4,000 simulations. In each, every municipality’s 2023 vote is shifted, party by party and on the logistic scale, until the total matches the provincial simulation; a municipal error is then added. Solid: the favorite finishes first in 95% of simulations or more; leaning: between 60% and 95%; toss-up: below 60%.
• Senate. Our own simulation of the lists in each province, assuming a joint PSOE and Frente Amplio list.
• 2024 European election. Interior Ministry polling-station data.
• Sociology. INE: Continuous Population Statistics (July 1, 2026, provisional), Household Income Distribution Atlas, 2021 Census. Municipal boundaries: es-atlas (IGN).
• Code. articulo_circ.py 39, in the altnalysis repository.