8 May 1983 1987 → Turnout 613,304 (66.7%) 1983 December 1977 | Registered 919,295 November 1979 1983 33 18 | |
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The 1983 Aragonese parliamentary election was held on Sunday, 8 May 1983, to elect the 1st democratically elected Courts of Aragon, the regional legislature of the Spanish autonomous community of Aragon. At stake were all 66 seats in the Courts, determining the President of the Government of Aragon.
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) came first in the election by winning exactly half the seats (33 out of 66), 1 short of an absolute majority, with 46.8% of the vote. The People's Coalition, a coalition of centre-right parties including the People's Alliance (AP), the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the Liberal Union (UL) came second with 18 seats and 22.6%, while the Regionalist Aragonese Party (PAR) finished third with 20.5% and 13 seats. The Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and the Democratic and Social Centre (CDS) both obtained 1 seat each with between 3-4% of the vote.
As a result of the election, Socialist Santiago Marraco was elected by the Courts as the first democratically elected President of Aragon.
Electoral system
The number of seats in the Aragonese Courts was set to 66 for the 1983-1987 period. All Courts members were elected in 3 multi-member districts, corresponding to Aragon's three provinces, using the D'Hondt method and a closed-list proportional representation system. As the community had not passed an electoral law of its own at the time, the electoral system came regulated under Decree 24/1983, which distributed the Courts seats as follows: Huesca (18), Teruel (16) and Zaragoza (32).
Voting was on the basis of universal suffrage in a secret ballot. Only lists polling above 3% of valid votes in each district (which include blank ballots—for none of the above) were entitled to enter the seat distribution.