The PP has replaced 70% of its lead candidates for Congress and 60% of its Senate slate. The party has also reached an unprecedented agreement with Vox on Senate lists, announced on 26 October as the parties approached the deadline for submitting electoral coalitions. The pact concerns Senate candidacies, not a nationwide alliance or the parties’ Congress lists.
The agreement is intended to limit the electoral impact of Senado de Progreso, the coalition chosen by PSOE and Frente Amplio to contest the Senate together and maximise their results. The coalition brings together the PSOE, IU, Movimiento Sumar, Compromís, Más Madrid, Chunta Aragonesista, Batzarre and Més across 44 provinces. Under the arrangement, Vox will withdraw its own Senate candidacy in Las Palmas, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Cádiz, Valencia, Castellón and the Balearic Islands; the PP will include six independent candidates proposed by Vox on its lists there. The PP will not field Senate candidates in Gipuzkoa, Girona and Tarragona. In 14 other provinces, including Sevilla, Huelva, Asturias, Badajoz, Álava, Navarra, Cáceres, Huesca, Zaragoza, Alicante, Granada, Cuenca, Pontevedra and Jaén, Vox will put forward one candidate rather than the three normally available. Vox voters can support that candidate and use their remaining selections for PP candidates. The pact affects 23 Senate constituencies and is designed to prevent fragmentation of the right-wing vote. Candidate changes are also taking place on local lists, including a PP list change in Ciudad Real ahead of the same election.
Teruel is the exception to Frente Amplio’s plan to field Congress candidates in every constituency. Chunta Aragonesista withdrew its candidacy there, aiming to take seats from the right and leave the province’s progressive space to PSOE. The Senate uses an open-list system, in which voters choose individual candidates. The left-wing coalition’s formation was the immediate backdrop to the PP-Vox agreement, which reporting described as a defensive, targeted arrangement. The Senate’s composition also matters to the balance surrounding four Constitutional Court seats whose mandates had expired.
The candidacies are due to be officially proclaimed on 2 November and published again in the BOE the following day. The general election is scheduled for 29 November.
