2023 Spanish general election

2023 Spanish general election
The 2023 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 23 July 2023, to elect the 15th Cortes Generales of the Kingdom of Spain. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 265 seats in the Senate.
The second government of Pedro Sánchez formed after the November 2019 Spanish general election consisted of a left-wing coalition between the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Unidas Podemos, the country's first such nationwide government since the times of the Second Spanish Republic. The government's tenure was quickly overshadowed by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, along with its political and economic consequences. These consequences included the COVID-19 recession resulting from the extensive COVID-19 lockdowns implemented to curb the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as the economic impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On the right side of the political spectrum, the People's Party (PP) underwent a leadership change at the 20th National Congress of the PP in February 2022, following an internal push by Galician and Madrilenian presidents, Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to remove party leader Pablo Casado. Since Feijóo's accession, the PP led opinion polls and finished first in the regional and local elections of 28 May 2023. Far-right Vox has been open to support the PP in a hung parliament in exchange for government participation and programatic concessions. The liberal Citizens party, once a leading force but having lost most of its support since 2019, decided not to run in this election, focusing its efforts on the 2024 European Parliament election instead.
Despite speculation about an early election, Pedro Sánchez, the incumbent prime minister of Spain, consistently expressed his intention to complete the legislature as scheduled in 2023. He had initially set a tentative election date for December 2023, near the conclusion of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the European Union. The poor results of the left-wing bloc in the May 2023 regional and local elections, with losses to the PP and Vox in all but three regions, led to a surprise early dissolution of Parliament in what was described as a gamble by Sánchez to wrong-foot the opposition.
In the closest election since 1996, the PP saw the biggest increase in support and secured 137 seats in the Congress, but fell short of expectations which had placed it at around 150 to 160 seats. The PSOE placed second and overperformed polls by improving upon previous results, gaining almost 1 million votes and scoring its best result since 2008 in terms of votes and vote share. Vox saw a decrease in its popular vote and seats, while Sumar won 31 seats in the Congress, a decrease in the popular vote and seats of its constituent parties. Neither bloc achieved a majority and, despite losses among Catalan independence parties, the balance of power was held by the Together for Catalonia (Junts) party of former Catalan president and fugitive Carles Puigdemont. In the case a government is not formed, a repeat election is likely.
Overview
Electoral system
The Spanish Cortes Generales were envisaged as an imperfect bicameral system. The Congress of Deputies had greater legislative power than the Senate, having the ability to vote confidence in or withdraw it from a prime minister and to override Senate vetoes by an absolute majority of votes. Nonetheless, the Senate possessed a few exclusive (yet limited in number) functions—such as its role in constitutional amendment—which were not subject to the Congress' override. Voting for the Cortes Generales was on the basis of universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age and in full enjoyment of their political rights. Amendments to the electoral law in 2022 abolished the "begged" or expat vote system, under which Spaniards abroad were required to apply for voter registration before being permitted to vote. The expat vote system was attributed responsibility for a major decrease in the turnout of Spaniards abroad during the years it had been in force.
For the Congress of Deputies, 348 seats were elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list, proportional representation, with an electoral threshold of three percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—being applied in each constituency. Seats were allocated to constituencies, corresponding to the provinces of Spain, with each being allocated an initial minimum of two seats and the remaining 248 being distributed in proportion to their populations. Ceuta and Melilla were allocated the two remaining seats, which were elected using plurality voting. The use of the D'Hondt method might result in a higher effective threshold, depending on the district magnitude.
As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Congress multi-member constituency was entitled the following seats:
For the Senate, 208 seats were elected using an open list partial block voting system, with electors voting for individual candidates instead of parties. In constituencies electing four seats, electors could vote for up to three candidates; in those with two or three seats, for up to two candidates; and for one candidate in single-member districts. Each of the 47 peninsular provinces was allocated four seats, whereas for insular provinces, such as the Balearic and Canary Islands, districts were the islands themselves, with the larger—Majorca, Gran Canaria and Tenerife—being allocated three seats each, and the smaller—Menorca, Ibiza–Formentera, Fuerteventura, La Gomera, El Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma—one each. Ceuta and Melilla elected two seats each. Additionally, autonomous communities could appoint at least one senator each and were entitled to one additional senator per each million inhabitants.
Election date
The term of each chamber of the Cortes Generales—the Congress and the Senate—expired four years from the date of their previous election, unless they were dissolved earlier. The election decree was required to be issued no later than the twenty-fifth day prior to the date of expiry of the Cortes in the event that the prime minister did not make use of his prerogative of early dissolution. The decree was to be published on the following day in the Official State Gazette (BOE), with election day taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication. The previous election was held on 10 November 2019, which meant that the legislature's term would have expired on 10 November 2023. The election decree was required to be published in the BOE no later than 17 October 2023, with the election taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication, setting the latest possible election date for the Cortes Generales on Sunday, 10 December 2023.
The prime minister had the prerogative to dissolve both chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election, provided that no motion of no confidence was in process, no state of emergency was in force and that dissolution did not occur before one year had elapsed since the previous one. Additionally, both chambers were to be dissolved and a new election called if an investiture process failed to elect a prime minister within a two-month period from the first ballot. Barred this exception, there was no constitutional requirement for simultaneous elections for the Congress and the Senate. Still, as of there has been no precedent of separate elections taking place under the 1978 Constitution.
Following his party's defeat in the 2021 Madrilenian regional election, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez commented that there were still "32 months to go" ahead of the next general election, which meant that the election date was implied to be tentatively scheduled for January 2024. This opened questions on the maximum timetable for holding a new election, with legal interpretations up until that point considering that the Cortes Generales expiry date was set four years from the previous election; however, an interpretation that considered that the four-year timetable started counting from the chamber's first assembly or from the prime minister's investiture could push the election date into January or February 2024. On 2 August 2022, Sánchez himself dispelled any doubts on this issue by announcing that the election would be held in December 2023, a position reiterated on 27 March 2023 when he said that there were still "nine months left" in the current parliamentary term.
After the 28 May 2023 regional and local elections, Sánchez announced the following day that the general election would be held on 23 July, with the election decree being published in the BOE the day after. With only Sánchez's inner circle having prior knowledge of the announcement before it was made, political parties from across the spectrum were caught by surprise, with PP leaders in particular reportedly feeling upset over the election call as it prevented them from capitalising on their gains in the previous day's elections. The IBEX 35 stock index also reacted negatively to the surprise election call. The Cortes Generales were officially dissolved on 30 May 2023 after the publication of the dissolution decree in the BOE, setting the election date for 23 July and scheduling for both chambers to reconvene on 17 August. This was the first time such an election was held in July since the 1839 Spanish general election.
Parliamentary composition
The tables below show the composition of the parliamentary groups in both chambers at the time of dissolution.
Parties and candidates
The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, coalitions and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form a coalition ahead of an election were required to inform the relevant Electoral Commission within ten days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of at least one percent of the electorate in the constituencies for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. Concurrently, parties, federations or coalitions that had not obtained a mandate in either chamber of the Cortes at the preceding election were required to secure the signature of at least 0.1 percent of electors in the aforementioned constituencies. The electoral law provided for a special, simplified process for election re-runs, including a shortening of deadlines, the lifting of signature requirements if these had been already met for the immediately previous election and the possibility of maintaining lists and coalitions without needing to go through pre-election procedures again.
Below is a list of the main parties and electoral alliances which contested the election:
Internal disputes emerged within the People's Party (PP) following Isabel Díaz Ayuso's landslide victory in the 2021 Madrilenian election, as the president of the Community of Madrid came to be seen by a party sector as a better candidate than Pablo Casado to face off Pedro Sánchez in a general election. The conflict came to a head from September 2021 when both sides clashed for the control of the People's Party of the Community of Madrid, with Ayuso's possible rise to the presidency of the regional PP being seen by Casado's supporters as an immediate threat to his national leadership. Following several months of a leadership that was perceived as poor and erratic, coupled with an erosion of popular support in opinion polls and a disappointing result in the 2022 Castilian-Leonese regional election, the crisis entered a new stage on 16 February 2022 when some media revealed an alleged plot of the party's national leadership to investigate Ayuso's family in search of compromising material—more specifically, alleged influence peddling in the awarding of public contracts to Ayuso's brother. After several days of public infighting between both Casado and Ayuso, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the president of the Regional Government of Galicia, was reported as having agreed with the latter and other party regional presidents to become the party's new leader and replace Casado, who was said to be willing to hold on until the 20th National Congress of the People's Party scheduled for July. On 22 February, Casado's resignation was announced after he was abandoned by most of the party's leadership and public officers.
As a result of Pablo Iglesias's farewell from active politics in May 2021, Yolanda Díaz, the Minister of Labour and from July 2021 also the Second Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, came to be widely regarded as Iglesias's presumptive successor as prime ministerial candidate in the next general election. Díaz expressed her will to shape a new electoral platform transcending political parties, as well as the Unidas Podemos brand, aiming to secure the support of ideologically close forces, such as En Comú Podem (ECP), Compromís, and Más Madrid/Más País, while giving a prevalent role to civil society. The platform saw an advance unity act during an event to be held on 13 November 2021, with the participation of a number of women representative of the various political spaces that could eventually join it: Díaz herself, Barcelona mayor Ada Colau (ECP), Valencian vice-president Mónica Oltra (Compromís), Madrilenian opposition leader Mónica García (Más Madrid), and Ceutan councillor Fatima Hamed (from the Movement for Dignity and Citizenship, MDyC); the absence of Podemos members in the event, most notably of Equality and Social Rights ministers Irene Montero and Ione Belarra, was seen as evidence of the growing diminished role of Unidas Podemos within the platform. Díaz's-led left-wing alliance was also well received by Sánchez, who saw it as important for the "progressive space" to be in "top shape" for his government to be able to maintain and expand its majority in the next election. While Broad Front has been frequently used in the media to refer to Díaz's platform, it has been commented that Díaz herself has rejected the use of this name for its connections with similar brandings used by left-wing populist alliances in Latin America. On 18 May 2022, it was announced that Díaz's platform would go under the name Sumar.
In September 2021, citizen collectives of the Empty Spain (or España Vaciada), a coined term to refer to Spain's rural and largely unpopulated interior provinces, agreed to look forward to formulas to contest the next elections in Spain, inspired by the success of the Teruel Existe candidacy (Spanish for "Teruel Exists") in the November 2019 general election. By November 2021, it was confirmed that over 160 collectives and associations from about 30 Spanish provinces had committed themselves to finalise the electoral platform before January 2022. It then contested the 2022 Castilian-Leonese regional election, with mixed results; it was a success in the province of Soria, where the Soria Now! (SY) platform is based, but it was a disappointment elsewhere.
On 30 May 2023, the national executive of Citizens, which had won 10 seats in 2019, announced that the party would not contest the general election following its poor results in the regional and local elections. This decision was criticised by a number of its elected representatives, including incumbent MP and former party leadership contender Edmundo Bal.
On 8 June 2023, as a result of the bad result of the Regionalist Party of Cantabria (PRC) in the 2023 Cantabrian regional election, the party leader Miguel Ángel Revilla announced that the PRC would not run in the elections, as agreed by its Executive Committee.
Timetable
The key dates are listed below. All times are CET, while the Canary Islands use WET (UTC+0) instead.
29 May: Felipe VI issued the election decree with the countersign of the prime minister after deliberation in the Council of Ministers.
30 May: Formal dissolution of the Cortes Generales and beginning of a suspension period of events for the inauguration of public works, services or projects.
2 June: Initial constitution of provincial and zone electoral commissions.
9 June: Deadline for parties and federations intending to enter into a coalition to inform the relevant electoral commission.
19 June: Deadline for parties, federations, coalitions, and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates to the relevant electoral commission.
21 June: Submitted lists of candidates are provisionally published in the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE).
24 June: Deadline for citizens entered in the Register of Absent Electors Residing Abroad (CERA) and for citizens temporarily absent from Spain to apply for voting.
25 June: Deadline for parties, federations, coalitions, and groupings of electors to rectify irregularities in their lists.
26 June: Official proclamation of valid submitted lists of candidates.
27 June: Proclaimed lists are published in the BOE.
7 July: Official start of electoral campaigning.
13 July: Deadline to apply for postal voting.
18 July: Official start of legal ban on electoral opinion polling publication, dissemination or reproduction and deadline for CERA citizens to vote by mail.
19 July: Deadline for postal and temporarily absent voters to issue their votes.
21 July: Last day of official electoral campaigning and deadline for CERA citizens to vote in a ballot box in the relevant consular office or division
22 July: Official 24-hour ban on political campaigning prior to the general election (election silence).
23 July: Polling day (polling stations open at 9 am and close at 8 pm or once voters present in a queue at/outside the polling station at 8 pm have cast their vote). Provisional counting of votes starts immediately.
26 July: General counting of votes, including the counting of CERA votes.
29 July: Deadline for the general counting of votes to be carried out by the relevant electoral commission.
7 August: Deadline for elected members to be proclaimed by the relevant electoral commission.
17 August: Deadline for both chambers of the Cortes Generales to be re-assembled (the election decree determines this date, which for the 2023 election was set for 17 August).
16 September: Final deadline for definitive results to be published in the BOE.
Campaign
Issues
An Ipsos poll published in July 2023 showed that most of the respondents saw economic issues as most important, followed by unemployment and healthcare. BBC News reported that LGBT issues have been also distinguished during the campaign period.
During the campaign period, Vox campaigned on lowering the income tax, reducing public spending, and introducing tougher anti-migration laws. Vox was also in favour of reducing powers of Spain's autonomous communities, rolling back abortion, LGBT, and women's rights, and pulling Spain out of the Paris Agreement. Sonia Gallego of Al Jazeera said that Vox's rhetoric "will put it on a collision course with those separatist movements, not just in the Basque Country but Catalonia as well". Vox received support from Brothers of Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, during the campaign period.
PP campaigned on lowering taxes and introducing policies that would boost foreign investments, with Feijóo trying to portray himself as a moderate. Feijóo was also faced with criticism from Sumar due to his past ties with drug trafficker when he served in the Galician government in the 1990s. Feijóo responded by saying that Dorado "had been a smuggler [but] never a drug trafficker" when he knew him. PP and Vox also campaigned on ending Sanchismo, policies introduced by Sánchez and his coalition government, with Feijóo stating that it his main priority. Both parties also accused Sanchez of overly relying on separatist parties to pass key legislation and pardoning jailed leaders. The catchphrase Let Txapote vote for you was popularized within this context.
PSOE's Sánchez has portrayed the election as a "showdown between the forces of progress and the forces of reactionary conservatism". He also criticised the relationship between PP and Vox. PP criticised PSOE's sexual assault law (Ley del solo sí es sí), which was introduced in August 2022, and PSOE's relationship with minority and pro-independence parties. At least 104 convicted sexual offenders were released due to the law; Sánchez apologised for the loopholes in the law.
Sumar campaigned on criticising Vox and focusing on issues regarding climate change and introducing a shorter workweek. In order to challenge social inequality, Díaz proposed a €20,000 "universal inheritance" policy for those over 18 years old which could be spent on studies or creating a business. As part of its campaign policy, Sumar also campaigned on increasing taxes on the rich.
Party slogans
Election debates
Opinion polls
Opinion polls
Polling aggregations
Voter turnout
The table below shows registered vote turnout on election day without including voters from the Census of Absent-Residents (CERA).
Results
Congress of Deputies
Senate
Aftermath
37,466,432 voters had the right to vote in the general election. The election results showed that PP won 33.1 percent of popular vote and 137 seats in the Congress of Deputies, while PSOE won 31.7 percent of popular vote and 121 seats in the Congress of Deputies. Despite the PP gaining 48 seats and increasing its vote share by over 12 points, its result was well below expectations to reach above 150 or 160 seats and insufficient to secure a right-wing majority to govern. Conversely, the PSOE overperformed polls by improving upon previous results, gaining almost 1 million votes—the most votes gained by the prime minister's party in Spain after a full first term in office—scoring its best result since the 2008 Spanish general election in terms of votes and vote share.
Vox won 33 seats, losing 19 seats that it won in the previous election, while Sumar won 31 seats. In part due to a campaign led by the Assemblea Nacional Catalana encouraging pro-Catalan independence voters to boycott the election, pro-independence parties lost 46% of the votes they won in the previous election, materializing in the loss of 9 seats and the exit from the Congress of the anti-capitalists of the Popular Unity Candidacy.
Government formation
During the campaign period, news agencies mentioned that in case of a PP victory, it would have to rely on Vox for a parliamentary majority, despite Feijóo saying that he would prefer a minority government instead. The election results later showed that even PP and Vox together would not have enough seats to form a majority, considering that they won 170 seats in total. Both PP and PSOE claimed victory. If no government is formed, a snap election could take place, which would constitute a record third straight time in which regular general elections were inconclusive and required a following snap election. Due to the underperformance of the right-wing bloc, Feijóo's leadership was questioned by the Spanish right-wing; Feijóo went from offering a pact to the PSOE to warning of a rupture if Sánchez is confirmed prime minister with the support of separatists.
In the wake of the election results, the Catalan party Junts—led by former Catalan president and fugitive Carles Puigdemont—was widely seen as being the kingmaker, with both blocs having to rely on their favourable vote to form a government, likely coupled with further concessions on Catalan independence. The election of the president of the Congress of Deputies—or speaker—on 17 August saw the PSOE candidate Francina Armengol winning in a vote which was seen to boost Sanchez's hopes of re-election.
Notes
References
General elections in Spain
2023 elections in Spain