If Aliança Voters Listen to Orriols: One More Seat for Vox in Congress and a Senate Seat in Play in Girona

Aliança Catalana is not running on 29N, and Sílvia Orriols has said she understands that some of her voters will choose Vox. According to the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO), the Catalan government's polling center, almost one in five already plans to do so, and polls already reflect it. The room for growth lies with the four in ten who have not decided whom to vote for, but most of them are pro-independence and give Abascal a failing grade. If some of them did move, Vox would win between one and two seats in Congress. The effect is larger in the Senate, above all in Girona, where the agreement with the PP leaves Vox as the only option on the right. This is a hypothesis, not a forecast: it rests on a few statements and on data with very little history behind it.

26 October 2026 · Miguel · Leer en español

Before we start: what this analysis is and is not

This article does not change the altnalysis forecast. It is a hypothetical scenario, and it is worth saying from the outset what it rests on:

• A few statements. Sílvia Orriols, leader of Aliança Catalana, a party that is not fielding candidates in the general election, has said she understands that some of her voters will vote for Vox. She has not asked anyone to vote for any party, and we do not know how many voters have heard her or how many will follow her.
• Data with very little history. Aliança Catalana entered the Catalan Parliament for the first time in 2024, with 3.8% of the vote. There is no precedent for how its vote splits in a general election in which it is not on the ballot. All we have are the polls from the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió (CEO), the Catalan government’s polling center, which ask about both the Catalan Parliament and Congress.
• Small samples. Across five CEO barometers, from February 2025 to October 2026, 712 respondents say they would vote for Aliança in the Catalan Parliament. By province the numbers are small: 110 in Girona and 72 in Lleida.

Within those limits, the question is a specific one: how much could the seat distribution change if some of those voters chose Vox?

Who they are and how they plan to vote

Aliança now has considerably more voting intention than in 2024. In the CEO survey, 7.1% of respondents say they would vote for it in the Catalan Parliament, although that includes people who end up not voting. Its weight is twice as high in the inland provinces as on the coast.

What matters most is what they say they will do in Congress, where Aliança will not be on the ballot. The CEO asks them about the general election with a list of parties that does not include Aliança:

One in five would go to Junts and slightly fewer, 18%, to Vox. Ten percent would choose ERC, and the PSC (Socialists’ Party of Catalonia) and the PP together account for 13%. The rest, almost four in ten, have no destination: they say another party, or a blank or invalid ballot, or that they would not vote or do not know.

That 18% who already say Vox is included in the polls, and therefore in the forecast. Orriols’s statements can add something only if they move those who have not yet decided or those who currently plan to vote for Junts or ERC.

Why the room for movement is limited

Aliança voters share a party, but not views on Spain. The CEO asks them to rate leaders from 0 to 10, and the ratings differ widely depending on where they plan to go:

• Those who would already vote for Vox (125 respondents) rate Abascal at 6.0, almost three in four approve of him, and only 29% are pro-independence.
• Those with no destination (267), the ones Orriols could move, look much more like Junts voters. They rate Abascal at 2.0 and Puigdemont at 3.8. Some 69% are pro-independence and only one in five approves of Abascal.
• Those who would go to Junts or ERC (217) are the furthest away: 86% are pro-independence and they give Abascal a 1.5.

They all like Orriols, with ratings from 7.6 to 8.2. What they do not share is the other half of Vox’s message: the unity of Spain. Orriols’s gesture may remove some voters’ reluctance to vote for Vox, but most of those still without a destination have deeper reasons not to, and a statement does not resolve those reasons.

Two hypotheses, on top of the forecast simulations

To gauge the scale, we set out two hypotheses, without assigning either any probability:

• Low hypothesis: a quarter of Aliança voters with no destination in Congress move to Vox, along with 5% of those who currently would vote for Junts or ERC.
• High hypothesis: half of those with no destination move, along with 15% of the Junts or ERC voters.

To each of the 50,000 simulations in the October 26 forecast we add those votes in each Catalan province. The amount is proportional to Aliança’s weight in that province and to the 2026 resident population. We then recompute the seat distribution. Those who would not otherwise vote and move to Vox raise turnout, and those coming from Junts or ERC are subtracted from those parties.

In Congress the effect is one or two seats. Vox would go from an average of 6.1 deputies in Catalonia to 6.9 under the low hypothesis and 7.7 under the high one. The seats it gains come out of the PSC, Junts, the PP and ERC, none of them losing more than half a seat on average. Things change most often in Barcelona, because of its size, and in Lleida and Girona, because of Aliança’s weight there. The PP–Vox majority in Congress barely moves: it was already very likely.

Where it can matter: the Senate in Girona

The effect is larger in the Senate. In Girona and Tarragona, the PP–Vox Senate agreement leaves the PP without a list, and Vox is the only option on the right. With a fourth senator at stake, a few thousand votes decide who wins it.

In Girona, where Aliança is strongest, the probability that Vox wins a senator rises from 45% in the forecast to 58% under the low hypothesis and 72% under the high one. In Tarragona it was already high (86%) and rises only slightly. In Barcelona and Lleida it goes from nearly zero to possible (between 6% and 20%). In total, Vox would win between 0.4 and 0.9 senators on average. That may seem small, but it matters for two tight Senate calculations: the ten senators Vox needs for its own parliamentary group, and the 161 the PP and Vox need together for a three-fifths majority.

What to keep in mind

• It is a hypothesis, not a prediction. The figures show what would happen if certain assumptions held, not that it will happen. There is no precedent for how the Aliança electorate votes without its party on the ballot, so we cannot calibrate what fraction will move.
• The polls will tell. If Orriols’s statements move votes, it will show up in the next polls, and the forecast already gives more weight to recent polls during the campaign. That is why we do not add it to the model by hand.
• Nothing may happen, or the opposite. A voter understanding that others vote for Vox does not mean they will do so themselves. And the reaction of other parties, especially Junts, the main destination for these voters, also counts.
• The samples are small. Aliança’s weight in Girona and Lleida comes from 110 and 72 interviews. The margin of error is several points, and the provincial figures should be read as orders of magnitude.

How we calculated it

• Polls. Microdata from the CEO’s Baròmetre d’Opinió Política, waves 1119, 1126, 1145, 1167 and 1169 (10,000 interviews, unweighted because the CEO publishes these waves with a weight of 1). Aliança voters: those who would vote for it in the Catalan Parliament. Their destination in Congress is the general-election voting-intention question, which does not offer Aliança. Leader ratings, from 0 to 10, excluding “don’t know.”
• Hypotheses. Aliança votes by province: the 2026 resident population times Aliança’s weight among respondents in that province. No destination in Congress: another party, or blank, invalid, would not vote, and don’t know. The votes are added to the simulations of the October 26 forecast (valid votes reconstructed using simulated turnout) and D’Hondt is rerun with the 3% threshold.
• Senate. The same Vox increase, in vote share, is applied to the Senate model in its base scenario, which includes the October 26 PP–Vox agreement.
• Code. escenario_aliansa.py and articulo_aliansa.py, in the altnalysis repository. See also the October 21 analysis of Catalonia and today’s analysis of the Senate agreement.