The Spanish Congress of Deputies has 350 seatswhich will be renewed in the general elections on June 23, 2023 for universal, free, equal suffrage, straight and secret, of all Spanish voters over the age of 18 who appear in the census, a total of 37.4 million Spaniards. Approximately five percent of these voters are residents or absent residents in the Canary Islands, around 1.8 million, and have a representation equivalent to 4.28%.
Canaries votein the two circumscriptions that are in the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands to choose to 15 deputies of the 350 in Congress. The constituencies in the elections to the Congress of Deputies correspond to the provinces, which are 50. However, there are 52 constituencies because two of them correspond to the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla.
Although the number of deputies assigned to each constituency varies depending on its number of inhabitants, the provincial constituencies are guaranteed two starting seats and one each for the autonomous cities. In this way, 102 deputies are fixed by constituency and the remaining 248 at stake in the 23J elections are those that are distributed based on the number of inhabitants in each province. For this reason, the province of Badajoz loses a seat for the general elections of 23Jwhile Valencia wins one compared to the previous ones of 2019.
The question of population determines that to the Las Palmas province correspond to eight deputies and to Santa Cruz de Tenerifeseven.
Deputies by province
According to the rule of the two deputies per constituency plus the distribution of the rest by population, Las Palmas sends the same number of politicians to the Congress of Deputies as the Balearic Islands, La Coruña and Vizcaya. For its part, the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife occupies the same number of seats as Asturias, Granada, Pontevedra and Zaragoza.
Above the Canary provinces are, according to population: Madrid, with 37; Barcelona, 32; Valencia, 15; Alicante and Seville, with 12; Malaga, 11; Murcia, ten and Cádiz, nine.
Below Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife are, according to their population: Almería, Badajoz, Córdoba, Gerona, Guipúzcoa, Tarragona and Toledo, with six; Cantabria, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Huelva, Jaén, Navarra and Valladolid, with five; Álava, Albacete, Burgos, Cáceres, La Rioja, León, Lérida, Lugo, Orense and Salamanca, with four; Ávila, Cuenca, Guadalajara, Huesca, Palencia, Segovia, Teruel and Zamora, with three; Soria, with two; and Ceuta and Melilla, with one each.
How many votes does each deputy cost?
Madrid and Barcelona contribute more deputies to Congress, while Soria, the least populated province, is the one that contributes the least, with the minimum corresponding to each province and without adding anything per population. By virtue of the Law d’hont, a deputy from Madrid is more expensive in votes than one from Soria.
To enter the chamber, a congressman from Madrid will require many more votes than one from Soriano. By the same rule, a deputy from the province of Las Palmas -where there are 898,852 voters- costs more votes than one from the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife -where there are 881,209 voters-.
Electoral census data for 23J
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Of the 37.4 million people entitled to vote in the 23J general elections, 35.1 million live in Spain, while the remaining 2.3 reside abroad.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, with 107,173 voters residing abroad, is one of the provinces with the highest percentage of this type of voter, 12.16%, only behind Zamora, with 12.78%; Asturias, with 12.82%; and from the four Galician provinces: La Coruña and Pontevedra, 15%; Lugo, 20.45%; and Ourense, 28.9%.
