Murcia: From the PP's 64% in 2011 to a Showdown With Vox for the Last of Its Ten Seats

Murcia elects ten members of Congress on November 29, and in the central scenario the forecast gives five to the conservative People's Party (PP), three to Vox and two to the Socialists (PSOE). But the tenth seat has no owner: the PP wins it in 42% of simulations, Vox in 33% and the PSOE in 22%. The region went from giving the PP 64% of the vote in 2011 to seeing Vox come first in November 2019, and in 2023 the PP recovered 41%. With the PP winning 41 of its 45 municipalities in 2023 the map looks stable, but our estimate puts Vox ahead in five of them.

25 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español

Ten seats and a right that splits the vote

The Region of Murcia is a single-province district with ten members of Congress, the same as in 2023. That year the PP won with 41.2% of the vote and four seats, ahead of the PSOE (25.3%, three), Vox (21.8%, two) and Sumar (9.6%, one).

The forecast of Saturday, October 24, gives the PP 37.3% of the vote (between 28.6% and 46.2% in 95% of simulations); Vox, 28.9% (21.1–37.6%); the PSOE, 21.3% (15.3–28.3%); Frente Amplio, the candidacy that succeeds Sumar, 4.9% (2.1–9.5%); Podemos, which runs separately, 2.5%; and Se Acabó La Fiesta (SALF), 2.0%. In seats, the PP ends up between three and five (four in 53% of simulations, five in 38%), Vox between two and four (three in 60.5%) and the PSOE between two and three (two in 69%). Frente Amplio wins a seat in 7% of simulations.

The tenth seat: PP, Vox and PSOE

Nine seats are fairly clear. The central scenario, which allocates all ten, gives five to the PP, three to Vox and two to the PSOE; the PP’s fifth is the one in play. The PP wins it in 41% of simulations, and its main challenger is Vox (33%). Seen another way, the last seat in the allocation goes to the PP in 42% of cases, Vox in 33%, the PSOE in 22% and Frente Amplio in 3%. The median gap that decides that seat is about 17,700 votes (half of the simulations fall between 7,400 and 33,100). The PSOE’s second seat is safe in 97.5% of simulations and Vox’s third in 93%.

It is a familiar pattern: Murcia has decided its last seat by very small margins and is one of the provinces we cover in The Small Ones Matter (II). In 2023 it was the PSOE’s third seat, and the PP would have needed 7,378 additional votes to take it. You can see how all the last seats rank on the last seat page.

From PP hegemony to three parties and back

The PP won 61.2% of the vote and seven seats in 2008, and 64.2% and eight in 2011, with the PSOE at 21.0% and two seats. Then came fragmentation: in 2015 the PP fell to 40.4% (five seats), Podemos and IU together took 18.3% and Ciudadanos 17.7%. In April 2019 the PSOE won (24.8%, three seats), with the PP at 23.4% and Vox at 18.6%. And in November 2019, Vox was the most-voted party in the region, with 28.0%, ahead of the PP (26.5%) and the PSOE (24.8%), three seats each. That day Vox won 16 of the 45 municipalities; the PSOE, 15; the PP, 14.

In 2023 the PP recovered to 41.2% and won 41 municipalities (the PSOE, four). Between November 2019 and 2023, 60% of municipalities changed winner (27 of 45), and 35 have done so at least once since 2008.

Municipal map: the PP, with Vox close behind

For 2026 the model makes the PP the favorite in 37 of the 45 municipalities, Vox in five and the PSOE in three. Only five municipalities are “solid” favorites (the favorite finishes first in at least 95% of simulations), 31 are “leaning” and nine are toss-ups; by number of voters, 87% live in “leaning” municipalities. Six municipalities would change winner relative to 2023: five from the PP to Vox (Fuente Álamo de Murcia, 69%; Alguazas, 70%; Lorquí, 56%; Villanueva del Río Segura, 53%; and Ceutí, 49%, a toss-up) and Moratalla, from the PSOE to the PP (54%).

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

In the big cities the PP starts ahead, but with Vox close. In the regional capital, the PP won 42.9% in 2023, the PSOE 22.8% and Vox 21.4%, and the municipal forecast gives the PP a 90% chance of finishing first. In Cartagena, the PP has a 73% chance of finishing first and Vox 26.5%. In Lorca the PP is at 82%; in Molina de Segura, 78%; in Yecla, 96%.

Inside the capital

The city of Murcia, with 331,717 voters, was almost single-colored in the 2023 general election: the PP was the most-voted party in 376 of its 387 census sections, the PSOE in 10 and Vox in one. The picture is different for 2019: in November that year, among the 306 sections of the city that have kept the same code since 2008, Vox won 117, the PP 142 and the PSOE 47.

Across the region, 891 census sections keep their code in all seven elections (75% of the 2023 electorate). In 784 of them (85% of the voters in those sections) the bloc made up of the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox has finished ahead of the PSOE and the left in all seven elections; only 11 have always been on the left. From November 2019 to 2023, 504 sections changed winner: 361 went from Vox to the PP, 130 from the PSOE to the PP and 13 from Vox to the PSOE. Among those sections, 134 were decided in 2023 by less than five points.

Turnout

In 2023, 70.8% of resident voters turned out, below April 2019’s 75.7% and 2008’s 80.5%. The October 24 forecast is 74.2% of residents, with a 95% interval from 68.5% to 79.4%. That is a wide interval: with 1.1 million voters, each point of turnout is about 11,000 votes, of the same order as the median gap that decides the last seat.

The 2024 European elections: a second-order contest

In the 2024 European elections, with turnout of 46.8%, the PP won 42.9% in the region, the PSOE 25.1% and Vox 15.9%. Se Acabó La Fiesta took 6.6%, Sumar 3.3% and Podemos 2.4%. In the region, SALF beat Sumar and Podemos combined (5.7%). European elections are second-order contests: turnout is lower and voters have different incentives, so the model uses them only in part, to split SALF’s and Podemos’s vote across provinces.

The Senate

Murcia elects four senators. The model gives the PP most of the list: three senators in 73.5% of simulations. The fourth is between Vox (in the most likely split, PP 3 and Vox 1, at 52%) and the joint PSOE and Frente Amplio list, which takes it in 21% (PP 3 and the joint list 1). There is a 9% chance that Vox wins two, with the PP taking the other two.

Who votes in Murcia

The region has 1,616,189 residents. It is younger than Spain: 14.8% are under 15 (12.4% nationally) and 17.6% are 65 or older (21.2%). It has a larger foreign-citizen population (16.8% vs. 14.9%) and lower income: €13,218 per person vs. €15,948, and €36,922 per household vs. €40,605.

Two features help read the map: agriculture employs 11.0% of workers (3.5% in Spain), and only 25.7% of residents hold a college degree (31.9%). The data do not let us say how much of Vox’s vote comes from either feature: here we only describe where they are.

How we calculated it

• History. Official Congress results (Spain’s Official Gazette, BOE) from 2008 to 2023, grouped by party family. Results by municipality and section come from the Interior Ministry’s polling-station files; adding the vote from Spaniards abroad, they match the BOE totals in all seven elections. Turnout: residents only, excluding the overseas vote.
• Provincial forecast. altnalysis’s October 24 forecast (50,000 simulations); seat and last-seat probabilities come from those simulations.
• Municipal estimate. 4,000 simulations of the forecast: in each one, each municipality’s 2023 vote is shifted party by party, on a logistic scale, until the total (excluding the overseas vote, held at its 2023 split) matches the simulation; then a municipal error is added, larger the smaller the municipality. Solid: the favorite finishes first in 95% of simulations or more; leaning, between 60% and 95%; toss-up, below 60%. It shows where the battle is, not what a specific municipality will do.
• Sections. Interior Ministry polling-station files summed by census section; the capital map shows the most-voted party in each section in 2023, not a forecast. In the bloc comparison, right is PP, Ciudadanos and Vox; left, PSOE, IU, Podemos, Más País and Sumar. Only sections with the same code in all seven elections are included.
• 2024 European elections. Interior Ministry polling-station files, each party’s vote in the province, as a share of valid votes.
• Senate. The Senate model’s 50,000 simulations, with the PSOE and Frente Amplio on a joint list (a model assumption until the candidacies are published).
• Demographics. INE (Spain’s statistics office): Continuous Population Statistics (July 1, 2026, provisional), Household Income Distribution Atlas, 2021 Census and Labor Force Survey. Municipal boundaries: es-atlas (from Spain’s National Geographic Institute).
• Code. articulo_circ.py 30, secciones_circ.py 30 and articulo_mapa_capital.py 30, in the altnalysis repository.