general updates - January 7th 2020 (mostly spain)

Spain has a new government. With a vote of 167-165, with 18 abstentions, the new left wing coalition has been approved in the legislature.

The new coalition is primarily made up of PSOE and UP, also known as the Socialists and Podemos.


The new government will have 155 members (120 PSOE and 35 UP) and will be the first coalition in Spain since its transition to democracy. They are short of the 176 needed for a majority, however. UP seems to have lost all of their seats in the upper house, but PSOE has 111 (133 needed for a majority). The three main opposition parties (PP, C's and Vox) will have a combined 151 in the house and 108 in the senate.

Supporting the new government will be PNV, MP, NCa, BNG, and TE.
These are, in order, the Basque Nationalists (centrist and regionalist), Mas Pais (progressive), New Canaries (centre left and regionalist), the Galician Nationalist Bloc (socialist and regionalist), and Teruel Exists (regionalist) which calls for fair treatment for the province of Teruel

Opposing the new government will be JxCat, CCa, UPN, and FAC, as well as the PRC, and CUP.
these are, in order, Together for Catalonia (centrist and regionalist), Canarian Coalition (conservative and regionalist), the Navarrese People's Union (conservative and regionalist), the Asturial Forum (conservative and regionalist), as well as the Regionalist Party of Cantabria (progressive and regionalist), and Popular Unity Candidacy [Catalonia] (socialist and regionalist)

In the middle are the ERC and EH Bildu. The ERC, or Republican Left of Catalonia is left-wing and regionalist, while EH Bildu, or Basque Country Unite, is also left-wing and regionalist.

In sum this splits the house as follows:

155 - Government
12 - Support of government
167 - SUBTOTAL
18 - Issue by Issue support
185 - SUBTOTAL (majority)

151 - Main opposition (3 parties)
12 - Other Right-wing
163 - SUBTOTAL
3 - Other opposition
166 - SUBTOTAL
18 - Issue by Issue support
186 - SUBTOTAL (majority)


In the Senate, things are a bit different, as, only 208 members are directly elected; the other 57 are selected by the provinces. the sums are as follows:

119 - Government
12 - Support of government
131 - SUBTOTAL
15 - Issue by Issue support
144 - SUBTOTAL (majority)

109 - Main opposition (3 parties)
8 - Other Right-wing
117 - SUBTOTAL
2 - Other opposition
119 - SUBTOTAL
15 - Issue by Issue support
134 - SUBTOTAL (majority)


Interestingly, the ERC alone ends up being the kingmaker in all scenarios. If EH Bildu votes with the opposition on any particular issue, neither the government nor the opposition then has a majority in either chamber; the ERC ends up with the swing votes.

It is thus interesting that the ERC leader is current in Prison for his role in the Catalan independence declaration. He had been elected to the European Parliament, yet was found guilty, and thus on December 19th of 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that he should be released as MEP's have parliamentary immunity from being charged with political crimes.

How this all plays out remains to be seen.



Elsewhere, there is simply not much to update on. I decided to make a basic mathematical projection for a German election however, this was the result:

180 - CDU/CSU
135 - Grn
90 - AfD
84 - SPD
58 - FDP
51 - Lnk

This result would likely lead to a CDU-Green coalition, even if only because the current CDU-SPD coalition would lack a majority.



Many other countries have yet to return to regular polling after the winter break, and those that have, like Israel, have confusing polling as the candidate submission deadline has yet passed and pollsters try to guess at the final coalition negotiations that have yet to take form.