La Rioja: Vox Within a Couple of Points of the Fourth Seat That the PP and the PSOE Split in 2023

La Rioja elects four members of Congress, and with so few seats every point counts. In 2023 the conservative People's Party (PP) and the Socialists (PSOE) split them two and two, and Vox, with 9.8%, was left out. The November 29 forecast gives Vox 16.7% and a seat in 61% of simulations; the last seat goes to Vox in 48%, to the PP in 30% and to the PSOE in 22%, with a median gap of about 6,700 votes. The central scenario gives the PP two seats, the PSOE one and Vox one.

25 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español

La Rioja is one of the smallest districts: it elects four members of Congress, and in the 2023 general election it split them two for the PP (45.6% of the vote) and two for the PSOE (35.7%). Vox, with 9.8%, and Sumar, with 6.6%, won no seat. With four seats, the real barrier to winning one is around 15% of the vote, far above the legal 3% threshold. This is the case we explain in “Small Ones Matter (II)”, and that we track on the last seat page.

Seven elections and a fourth seat that changes hands

The PP has been the most-voted party in five of the seven elections since 2008, and the PSOE in the other two (April and November 2019). In 2008, with 49.5% and 43.6%, the PP and the PSOE took two seats each. In 2011 the PP rose to 54.7% and three seats. In 2015 and 2016 the vote split four ways: Ciudadanos won 15.1% and 14.0%, and the parties to the PSOE’s left 20.0% and 16.6%, with one seat. In April 2019 the PSOE won with 31.7% and two seats, ahead of the PP (26.5%). In 2023 the two-two split returned.

The last seat has changed party five times across the six transitions between elections: PSOE (2008), PP (2011), the alternative left (2015 and 2016), PSOE (April 2019), PP (November 2019) and PSOE (2023). In 2015 it was decided by 1,261 votes against Ciudadanos, and in 2023 by 13,768 votes in the PSOE’s favor against the PP.

The forecast: Vox and the fourth seat

The model gives the PP 42.2% of the vote (between 32.8% and 51.8% in 95% of simulations), the PSOE 29.4% (21.5–38.1%), Vox 16.7% (11.5–22.9%), Frente Amplio, the successor to Sumar, 4.0% (1.7–7.9%), Podemos, which the model treats as running separately, 2.4% (0.8–5.5%) and SALF 1.8% (0.6–4.1%). The 2026 slate of parties is still an assumption until the proclaimed candidacies on November 3.

Three seats are very clear: two for the PP (the second in 97% of simulations) and one for the PSOE (99.9%). The fourth is the one in play: Vox wins it in 48% of simulations, the PP, with a third seat, in 30%, and the PSOE, with a second, in 22%.

There is more nuance. Vox has at least one seat in 61% of simulations and none in 39%. The PSOE ends with one seat in 75% and two in 25%. The PP has two seats in 81% of simulations, three in 16% and one in 3%. Frente Amplio wins a seat in only 0.1% of simulations.

The median gap between the winner of the last seat and its closest rival is about 6,700 votes (2,700 to 14,000 between the first and third quartiles), in a province where 176,945 people voted in 2023 (including the vote from abroad). That is roughly half of the 13,768 votes of 2023.

Turnout

In 2023, 74.9% of electors resident in Spain voted; including residents abroad (CERA), who vote very little, turnout over the total electoral roll was 70.2%. For November 29 the model expects turnout of 76.9% of residents (between 71.6% and 81.7%). Since 2008, turnout among residents in La Rioja has ranged from 71.3% in November 2019 to 80.8% in 2008.

Town by town

La Rioja has 174 municipalities, many of them very small: 8.1% of its residents live in municipalities of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants (3.0% in Spain). In 2023 the PP won 140 municipalities, the PSOE 33 and Vox one. The PP won fewer than in 2011 (161, against 13 for the PSOE), but more than in April 2019 (98, against 74) or in November of that year (113, against 61). Since 2008, 85 of the 174 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 153 municipalities (29 solid, 102 leaning and 22 toss-ups), the PSOE in 18 (6 leaning and 12 toss-ups) and Vox in 3 (all toss-ups). Sixteen would change winner: 14 from the PSOE to the PP, one from the PSOE to Vox and one from the PP to Vox, almost all of them municipalities with fewer than 800 voters. Among the larger towns, Logroño, which the PSOE won in both 2019 general elections and the PP recovered in 2023 (44.9% to 36.6%), leans back to the PP (92%), with an estimated 41.9%; so do Calahorra (95%), Arnedo (81%), Lardero (98%, solid) and Alfaro (92%). Haro, which the PSOE won in 2023 by 2.2 points, is the only one of the four largest that would change winner, and by a small margin (PP, 60%, toss-up).

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. In La Rioja, where 141 of the 174 municipalities have fewer than 500 voters, most of the toss-ups are villages where a few dozen votes decide the winner.

The Senate

In the Senate, La Rioja 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 81% of simulations and the joint list one in 80%. The most likely split is 3-1 for the PP (80%); 2-2 comes up in 11% and 1-3 in 9%. Vox wins a senator in only 0.5% of simulations. 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, La Rioja gave SALF (Se Acabó La Fiesta) 3.7% of valid votes (4,546 votes), Sumar 3.3% (4,044) and Podemos 2.4% (2,918), out of 124,067 valid votes. 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. The forecast for SALF in La Rioja for November 29 is 1.8%.

Who votes in La Rioja

La Rioja has 330,756 residents. Its population is younger than Asturias’s or Cantabria’s: there are 184 people aged 65 and over for every 100 under 15 (171 in Spain), and 12.5% of residents are under 15, almost the same as in Spain (12.4%). It is also an industrial province: 27.5% of workers are employed in industry, double the share for Spain as a whole (13.6%).

15.6% of residents hold foreign citizenship, slightly above the 14.9% for Spain. The census employment rate is 50.1% (46.8% in Spain) and unemployment 12.7% (17.2%). Net income per person (€15,830) is similar to Spain’s (€15,948), but per household it is lower (€37,800 vs. €40,605).

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 26, in the altnalysis repository.