A total of 29,300 Galicians residing abroad voted in the 2024 regional elections, representing 6.15% of the 476,514 people participating in the electoral count of absent residents (CERA). These votes, which will not be announced until the 26th, will have no impact on the PP's absolute majority. Only in the province of Ourense was there a tie for the “leftovers” of the last seat, with the PSdeG 112 votes short of snatching a representative from the Popular Party. In A Coruña, the last elected representative, who came from the BNG, is well ahead of the PSdeG with 9,511 votes. In Pontevedra, the last seat at stake has gone to the PP, which, with 6,450 votes, also needs a significant gap to the PSdeG to be able to change it. This last elected member of the BNG has a slightly smaller gap to Lugo, in this case around 3,000 votes to the PSdeG. The results of this vote, which was not “inquired” for the first time after three regional elections, will be announced on February 26th. In 2020, 5,404 people (1.17%) voted; in 2016, 10,777 (2.41%); and in 2012 12,954 (3.26%). In 2009, 101,708 voters cast their votes abroad, 30.2% of all voters. In the last parliamentary elections in Galicia in July 2023, the first elections without a “prompt” in recent years, the PP was the leading force and the PSdeG came second in the four provinces. The general director of Emerxencias, Santiago Villanueva, reported the external voting data this Sunday in a press conference at the Xunta data center installed in San Caetano. PROVINCES AND COUNTRIES The foreign votes broken down by province are currently not known. In any case, the constituency of A Coruña is the one that records the most CERA voters, with 164,8421; followed by Pontevedra with 138,182; Ourense with 103,832; and Lugo with 69,658. As for the “top five” countries, Argentina continues to lead by a wide margin in terms of the number of potential voters residing abroad, with 166,289. This is followed by Cuba and Brazil, where there are more than 45,000. Uruguay now calculates 37,165; and Switzerland, the first country outside the Americas in the ranking, 34,114. CHANGES IN DEPUTES The CERA thus reflects the percentage weight that residents abroad have in deciding the future autonomous government, a fact that supports a look at the history of elections held in the municipality. It was not for nothing that when Manuel Fraga lost the absolute majority in 2005, he gave emigrants the opportunity to move up to the 38th seat. The focus at that time was on the province of Pontevedra, but the counting of foreign votes confirmed the end of the Fraga era at the head of the Xunta. Four years later, in March 2009, his successor Alberto Núñez Feijóo managed to win 39 of the 75 seats in the Autonomous Chamber on election night. Subsequently, the absolute majority of the émigré vote would fall to 38 votes, with the PSOE gaining one for Ourense to the detriment of the PPdeG. For the current national leader of the PP, on the other hand, the support of expatriates allowed him to obtain his largest absolute majority in the regional elections of July 2020, in which he last contested in Galicia, when he reached 42 minutes in the Galician Chamber. – The Diaspora suffrage count tipped the scales in their favor this time, taking a seat from the PSdeG in Pontevedra, which the PPdeG added –.
