Camposol voting figures: no true poll figures can be deduced

The voting figures for the Camposol Urbanisation in isolation cannot be correlated - and there IS a reason!

When voting areas for regional and municipal elections are mapped out by the “Oficina del Censo Electroral” (Electroral Census Office) in Spain, one of the requisites that needs to be considered is “Voter privacy”. To ensure voter privacy the Electoral Office takes into consideration the projected number of voters registered to vote in a designated area or section and which election they are eligible to participate in.

If there is a particularly low number of voters registered in an area, maybe because of low or rural housing density, it may be possible to extrapolate or work out which candidate or party individual voters selected. To avoid this possibility, the voting sections (or Wards as they are known in the UK) are increased or re-deliniated to include an area or areas with a voting population that will increase the voter numbers and reduce the risk of voter privacy being compromised.

Some years before the 2015 elections a local Camposol political party lobbied for a voting station on the Camposol urbanisation. The Electoral Census Office agreed to a voting station at the Camposol Social Centre for the 2014 EU elections but were concerned that because the regional and municipal elections have to be held simultaniously using the same stations the Camposol registered Spanish citizens' voting privacy in the regional election could not be guaranteed as the number fell below the 200. However, using the voting section layout a Voting Station was allowed for the 2015 Regional and Municipal elections, although a situation arose where some voters from Camposol had to travel to Mazarrón to vote and some voters from Mazarrón had to travel to Camposol, which proved unpopular.

No Camposol Voting Station was used in the 2019 or 2023 elections and voters registered on Camposol were designated to the voting station at the Centro de Iniciativas Municipales de Empleo (CIME) in Mazarrón itself.

After votes are cast and the voting stations are closed the votes in the boxes from each section are counted and the results announced and amalgamalted with the rest of the Region or Municipality to produce the respective results. These results are made public and can in some instances be broken down to specific sections. Indeed, some regional newspapers publish maps where the municipal results from individual sections are available.

In the case of Camposol the urbanisation is spread over 3 electoral sections, as can be seen by an approximation of the sections in the above map, and apart from some anomalies which may have been caused by the change of the Camposol código postal (post code) some years ago, these sections are:

- Section 010 which covers Camposol Sectors C and D and also includes Mazarrón Country Club, Rusticana and other rural residences down to the border of the town plus a populated area in the north-east.

- Section 018 which covers Camposol Sector B and large area of rural properties to the north and south and a populated area in the north of Mazarrón town.

- Section 021 which covers Camposol Sector A plus a large area of rural properties to the east and a populated area in the north west of Mazarrón town.

As the votes in the boxes are not personalised and with the Camposol votes being spread over the 3 voting sections and each section including a large amount of voters from outside the urbanisation it is impossible to trace or isolate the way votes were cast by the Camposol residents who registered to vote, which one may surmise was the aim of the procedure - any claim in the newspapers to have found a way to isolate Camposol voting would appear to be open to debate!.

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