Where would Aliança Catalana's votes end up in the general elections?

BarcelonaAliança Catalana is the party that is growing the most in the polls. In the CEO barometer, it is in second position in Parliament and is close to leading the pro-independence bloc. Thousands of potential votes that will have to seek an alternative in the general elections. The party leader, Sílvia Orriols, has committed to incorporating into Aliança Catalana's statutes that they will never run in Spanish elections. Where would these votes go, then?

There would basically be two parties that would benefit from it. Junts per Catalunya would take 23% of the votes from Aliança Catalana and Vox, 22%. These are precisely the two parties from which the pro-independence far-right feeds its meteoric rise in Parliament. That is to say, the CEO's survey points to the possibility of a dual vote being drawn up depending on the elections: a significant group of voters would opt for Aliança Catalana in the Catalan elections and for Junts and Vox in the Spanish elections.

The CEO predicts a significant drop for Junts both in Parliament (16-18 deputies) and in Congress (4-5), but if Aliança Catalana decided to run in the general elections, the future would be much more worrying for Carles Puigdemont's party. The PSC would win the general elections in Catalonia (17-18), below the current 19 deputies, ahead of ERC (10-11), which would undo the current tie at 7 in the lower house with Junts and with Comuns, who would fall to 3-4.

Knowing that Catalonia could be key to defining majorities, Feijóo has set himself the challenge of growing the PP from 6 to 12 Catalan deputies in the Spanish lower house, but the barometer keeps them stagnant and predicts more dependence on Vox, which would surpass them (6-7) starting from the 2 seats they obtained three years ago.

Is Aliança Catalana center-right?

Aliança Catalana's proposals to limit immigration, its link between migrants and violence, or the criminalization of Islam are some of the arguments that place it among the far-right parties, which are growing across Europe. Many, in fact, are carbon copies of Vox's and the party also flirts with approaching formations like Germany's AFD, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, or Donald Trump's approaches in the United States.

But the concept of far-right does not have an exact definition and in the latest survey by ARA we already saw that Catalans are divided on where to place Aliança Catalana (and they are very clear in the case of Vox). Voters of Aliança Catalana also do not see themselves mostly on the far right of the parliamentary spectrum.

On average, when asked about their ideological self-location, they position themselves in the Catalan centre-right, as can be seen in the graph. On a scale of 0 (left) to 10 (right), where 5 is the centre, Aliança Catalana voters are at 5.7. PP voters are further to the right (6.4) and even more so Vox voters (7). To compare it with its main electoral rival, Junts voters (excluding all those who have already moved to Aliança Catalana) are, on the other hand, in the centre-left (4.7), where PSC voters are also found (3.9). Further to the left are ERC (3.1), Comuns (2.5), and CUP (2). Junts voters are also, on average, more Catalanist than Aliança voters.