8 May 1983 1987 → Turnout 901,872 (73.3%) 23 21 | Registered 1,230,011 25 March 1983 1983 416,177 364,676 | |
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The 1983 Castile-La Mancha parliamentary election was held on Sunday, 8 May 1983, to elect the 1st Courts of Castile-La Mancha, the regional legislature of the Spanish autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha. At stake were all 44 seats in the Courts, determining the President of the Junta of Communities of Castile-La Mancha.
Only two political parties were able to enter the Courts: the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) under MP José Bono, which won an absolute majority of seats (23 out of 44 seats), and the People's Coalition, an electoral alliance led by the right-wing People's Alliance (AP), which included the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the Liberal Union (UL).
As a result of the election, José Bono became the first democratically elected President of Castile-La Mancha.
Electoral system
The number of seats in the Castile-La Mancha Courts was set to a fixed-number of 44. All Courts members were elected in 5 multi-member districts, corresponding to Castile-La Mancha's five 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 55/1983, which distributed the Courts seats as follows: Albacete (9), Ciudad Real (10), Cuenca (8), Guadalajara (7) and Toledo (10).
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.