page_title: Electoral Carlism (Second Republic)
section_title: Electorate
hierarchical_section_title: Electoral Carlism (Second Republic) / Electorate
caption_attribution_description: English: part of a cartoon published in 1870 by a Spanish liberal periodical La Flaca. The fragment trimmed presents Carlist followers as sheep from the Pyrenees
context_page_description: In terms of electoral success Carlism of the Second Republic remained a medium-small political grouping, by far outperformed by large parties like PSOE and CEDA though trailing behind also medium-large contenders like Izquierda Republicana. During 3 electoral campaigns to the Cortes combined the Carlists seized less than 50 seats, which is below 3% of all seats available. Disorganized during the 1931 elections, the Carlist candidates were a first-choice political option for some 50,000 voters; following re-organization in successive campaigns the number grew to 420,000 and 365,000, respectively 4.9% and 3.8% of active electors. In the mid-1930s as a second-choice option the Carlists were acceptable candidates for some 1.8m voters. The movement enjoyed support mostly in the Northern belt of Spain; the party stronghold was Navarre, the only region where Carlism remained a dominating force; it was a minority group still to be reckoned with in Vascongadas, Old Castile and Aragón, with rather testimonial presence in some other regions. The best known Carlist Cortes personality was Tomás Domínguez de Arévalo, who held the mandate during all three Republican terms.
context_section_description: The Republican electoral system strongly encouraged coalitions and voters tended to block-vote all candidates from a specific electoral list; the result is that according to expert historians, the size of particular party electorate is impossible to be defined exactly. The simplest estimate of general Carlist electoral support is based on aggregating all votes obtained by candidates identified as Carlists; in 1931 this total was 0.27m votes (0.45m in case also disputed candidates are counted in), in 1933 it neared 2.11m and in 1936 it stood at 2.21m votes. Apart from the fact that due to different legislation the numbers from 1931 and from 1933/36 are not comparable and that there is some de-duplication needed, the aggregates by no means indicate how many voters preferred Carlism as their first-choice political option. Since every voter was entitled to choose a number of candidates, the figures might at best demonstrate that in the mid-1930s some 1,8 million Spaniards above 23 years of age (13% of the electorate and 18% of active voters) were prepared to support a Carlist candidate, either as a first-choice option or as an acceptable alliance partner.
  Though dividing the entire Spanish electorate by strict party allegiances seems impossible on basis of electoral results only, historians devised workarounds intended to arrive at least at some estimates. One method is based on calculating "proporción de decisiones" (PdD), another one focuses on calculating so-called "media de votos" (MdV); in most circumstances PdD and MdV methods return quite similar results. Since one component of the PdD method is available for 1931 only, the MdV method is followed to calculate figures for 1933 and 1936 campaigns. The number of voters who preferred Carlism as their first-choice political option is hence estimated at 51,000 people in 1931 (99,000 in case also dubious candidates are counted in), 422,000 people in 1933 and 366,000 people in 1936. In relative terms these figures amounted to 1.2% of all active voters in 1931 (0.8% of all those entitled to vote), 4.9% in 1933 (3.3%) and 3.8% in 1936 (2.7%). As there were probably some Carlist voters in districts with no Carlist candidate running the above figures should be understood as the lowest acceptable estimates, yet any substantial revision upwards does not seem likely.
  None of the works consulted attempts to define a social profile of the Carlist electorate, be it in terms of sex, age, education, occupation, residence or any other feature. Some approximation is offered by electoral studies dedicated to specific areas – not necessarily representative for the entire Spain – and by works providing social analysis of Carlism at the outbreak of the Civil War. Both types of analysis suggest that Carlism was generally a heterogeneous, inter-class movement, yet popular particularly in rural milieu of small towns and villages rather than in major urban centers; only 3 mandates were obtained by the Carlists in a strictly urban constituency of a large city. However, many scholars note also that implantation of Carlism was not equal in all rural areas; it was small- and mid-size farmers rather than landless rural proletariat who were particularly attracted.
caption: Carlist electorate (older Liberal cartoon)
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