By Anselm Bossacoma 9/28/2015
Catalonia’s poll yesterday was not a referendum. Those were parliamentary elections with several tickets running for and against independence, along with a number of alternative parties, with a diverse assortment of philosophies, some advocating Spanish constitutional reforms, others focusing on less corruption or better treatment of animals.
Coincidently, the parties running against independence were opposed to having a referendum in the style of Quebec or Scotland. After the two independence tickets clearly won the majority of seats last night, the unionist parties wish to turn yesterday’s poll onto a referendum by counting votes.
Let’s count then:
| Total votes: | 4,115,807 | 100.00% |
| Independence Votes: | 1,957,348 | 47.56% |
| Against Independence Votes: | 1,605,563 | 39.01% |
| Other Votes: | 515,023 | 12.51% |
| Invalid Votes: | 37,873 | 0.92% |
Interpreting the results in the style of the Quebec or Scottish referendums requires excluding the votes that are not relevant to the question. While I probably share many commonalities with those advocating for a favorable treatment of animals, or those seeking less corruption, or even those seeking a potential Spanish constitutional reform, these have nothing to do with the matter at hand, which is the question on Independence. Such question only has two answers: either YES to Independence or NO to Independence, the rest are NEITHER!
Therefore:
| Total votes: | 4,115,807 | 100.00% |
| Relevant votes: | 3,562,911 | 86.57% |
| Other Votes: | 515,023 | 12.51% |
| Invalid Votes: | 37,873 | 0.92% |
When interpreting the results on the question of Independence, the only applicable votes are the 3.5 million votes that voted for tickets running for or against Independence. All others must be excluded from such interpretation; otherwise the analysis is not valid!
Concluding:
| Total Relevant votes: | 3,562,911 | 100.00% | |
| Independence Votes: | 1,957,348 | 54.94% | YES |
| Against Independence Votes: | 1,605,563 | 45.06% | NO |
Whether you wish to count seats or votes last night’s results are undoubtedly clearly in favor of Independence. I used the election results published by www.ara.cat which can be found in this link http://www.ara.cat/eleccions27s/dades/resultats-catalunya-2015
Americans For Catalonia 