The final stretch of the 2023 municipal election campaign in Barcelona will be more decisive than ever. As the final week before the elections begins, the Trias per Barcelona candidate, ex-mayor Xavier Trias, heads a dizzying three-way tie with the Socialist Jaume Collboni and the current mayor and leader of BComú, Ada Colau, with Trias only a hair's breadth in front so that all three are in contention at the head of the race for power in the Catalan capital. This is the result of the survey for ElNacional.cat prepared by the Feedback Institute, which is directed by Jordi Sauret. The sample, of 600 interviews, was taken between May 15th and 18th, during the first week of the fortnight-long campaign that will close this Friday at midnight. The study predicts a participation of 62.32%, almost 4 points down on the 2019 municipal elections in Barcelona, in which it reached 66.17%.
Trias, the candidate who has the support of the broad centre-right Catalan space once filled by Covergència (CDC), is predicted to win the election in Barcelona city with 10 councillors, twice as many as obtained by Elsa Artadi's Together for Catalonia (Junts) candidacy in 2019, and 21.38% of the votes. In second place is be the candidate of the Catalan Socialists (PSC), Jaume Collboni, with 9-10, that is, one or two councillors more than he obtained in the previous elections, and 20.58% of the votes, just 0.80% below Trias. The current mayor, Ada Colau, would be in third place but with her Barcelona en Comú ticket also taking 9-10 councillors - either losing 1 seat or hold on to the 10 it has now - and 20.52% of the votes, that is to say, only 0.06% short of the Socialist and 0.86% behind Trias. In short, a handful of votes could decide the final tiebreaker and mayoralty, and whoever gets the edge, a complex geometry of post-electoral alliances seems to lies ahead.
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% of vote for each Barcelona candidature in the municipal elections 2023, in the Feedback/El Nacional.cat survey. Click on tap at top to select results from 2023, 2019 or both.
Below the leading trio, the results of the survey relegate the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) candidate, Ernest Maragall, to fourth place. The winner of the previous elections thus drops from 10 to 6-7 seats, that is, he would lose 3 or 4, taking 13.8% of the vote, 7.49% less than in 2019, when he reached 21.37 %. The fifth-largest party would be the People's Party (PP), with Daniel Sirera as head of the list, which would obtain 3 councillors, 1 more than in 2019 and 6.29% of the votes. Finally, and for the first time, the extreme right of Vox could enter the council, with the survey predicting 0-2 councillors for the party and 5.01% of votes, just over the 5% margin to enter the council.
The radical-left CUP, led by Basha Changue, is expected to remain outside the Catalan capital's city council, with 4.08% of votes. Also left out will be Ciudadanos (Cs), which in 2019 formed part of the anti-independence candidacy of former French prime minister Manuel Valls and which now has Anna Grau as the head of the list: it would collect 2.96% of votes and win no seats, thus certifying the disappearance of the party from the Barcelona municipal scene. In addition, the Valents candidacy, also inheriting part of the the Valls ticket with Eva Parera as candidate, would obtain a scant 2.00% of the votes, at the bottom of the electoral ranking.
Who is taking votes from whom?
In the ElNacional.cat poll's analysis of how support has been transferred from one candidacy to another, the 2011-15 mayor Trias shows off his legendary transversality: 61.1% of the voters who opted for Junts in 2019 would vote for him - the highest loyalty of a candidate among their own core electorate, according to the survey - but he would also receive support from 24.6% of those who voted for the PP and 19.7% of those who voted for the ERC in the last election; in addition, he attracts 11.8% of 2019 Cs voters and 5.7% of those who voted PSC last time. BComú, Ada Colau's party, would retain 51.7% of its own vote and capture 42.9% of CUP voters in 2019.
Who will the 2019 voters of each party support in 2023? Select the 2019 party in the tab, and the graph will show which party they intend to support on May 28th. Feedback/El Nacional.cat survey.
The PSC has the third-most loyal electorate: 51.0% of those who voted for Collboni in 2019 would do so again; 12.2% of former Colau voters would also vote for the Socialists, 2.7% for Junts and 2.5% for ERC. For his part, Ernest Maragall would only keep 40.7% of the votes he collected in 2019. ERC's voters leak mostly to the Trias candidacy (19.7%) and to a lesser degree to the PSC, with 3.7%, and BComú, 2.5%. As for the electoral legacy of the xenophobic Valls, who in 2019 added 3 of his councillors' votes to those of the PSC to give the mayoralty to Colau, those 2019 voters now turn to the PP (24.8%), Cs (12.8%), Trias for Barcelona (11.8%) and Valents (10.7%).
The post-election deals
The implication of the near dead-heat shown in the Feedback survey is that the make-up of the majority needed to proclaim the next mayor is highly unpredictable. Trias would need the support of two other parties to be invested on the first ballot - an absolute majority would require 21 councillors out of the 41 that make up the Barcelona plenum. Exactly the same would be true for Collboni or Colau if the results predicted by the survey were confirmed on May 28: a three-party deal would be necessary to take the mayoral staff.
In addition, the study detects strong divisions and a lack of definition when respondents are asked for their preference for a post-election agreement if no mayor obtains an absolute majority. The specific formula with the widest support is a pro-independence municipal government formed by Junts and ERC, with 24.2%, although it would also require the consent of a third party given the survey results. A left-wing tripartite (Comuns, PSC and ERC) is the preferred option of 23.4%. A Trias government with the PSC (the so-called sociovergència) has the support of 13.7%; while the other sociovergent combination, with the PSC in the driver's seat supported by Junts, only gathers 4.6% of support. However, 24.5% do not opt for any of these alliances for municipal government, 3.6% are indifferent and 6.1% don't know or won't answer. It's all up for grabs then, also, on the day after the elections.
Survey technical details: Study area: Barcelona. Universe: population agred 18 and over registered as Barcelona residents and entitled to vote in elections to the Barcelona city council. Method: telephone survey with a combination of landlines (70%) and cellphones (30%). Sample: 600 interviews. Quotas: according to three variables: age and sex structure, and city districts. Total possible margin of error: +-4.08% with a confidence level of 95.5%, where K=2 and the assumption of maximum indeterminacy (p=q=50/50). Field work: surveys conducted between Monday 15th and Thursday 18th May 2023.