Voting in the independence referenda held today in 161 municipalities in Catalunya close at 7pm and, thanks to the widget below, we should be able to see the results as they unfold, automatically updated every five minutes.
Full table of results, by Comarca (County) and Municipality
Map of Comarques
The precise wording of the question was:
Està vostè d’acord que la nació catalana esdevingui un estat de dret, independent, democràtic i social, integrat en la Unió Europea?
Do you agree that the Catalan nation should become a legal state,
independent, democratic and social, integrated in the European Union?
I think I should give some explanation of the figures, since they are not as straightforward as they might appear.
Because this is not an official poll, very few of those who would vote No or register an abstention by leaving the ballot paper blank are likely to turn out. That means the Yes vote will almost certainly be above the 90% mark. So the figure that really matters is the absolute number of Yes votes in relation to the electorate as a whole.
In a normal election or referendum the combined number of those who abstain and those who simply would not turn out to vote would be somewhere around 25%. This was the figure indicated in the OUC poll last weekend, though in other elections and referenda the turnout has been lower. So in order to safely say the referendum has been won the Yes vote needs to be more than half of the remaining 75% ... i.e. 37.5% or 265,000 as a round number.
A Yes vote of 291,500 would equate (on the same 75%) to 55% of the vote. This is the threshold that the EU set in order to recognize the validity of the Montenegrin vote on independence from Serbia in 2006. Setting that figure was a controversial decision, since in most democratic situations only a simple majority of the vote is required. However, it seems obvious that if the vote (when conducted on a Catalunya-wide basis) were to be above 55% the EU would have no alternative but to accept Catalunya's independence.
A Yes vote of above 353,500 would be a majority of the total electorate, and would justify dancing in the streets (not that dancing ever needs to be justified) until Christmas.
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The population of Catalunya is about 7.3m, so at a guess the total electorate is probably about 5.5m. These referenda therefore represent a sample of about 13% of the total electorate. As noted here, a further 250 municipalities were expected to conduct their own referenda next Spring taking the total to over 400.
However, only a few days ago, Barcelona decided that its Comarca (with a total population of about two million) would hold a referendum on 25 April 2010. This means that a large majority of the population of Catalunya will by then have been given an opportunity to vote on independence. If things go according to plan, this will be enough to say with certainty whether or not there is a democratic mandate for independence ... irrespective of whether the Spanish State chooses to recognize it as legal.
