8 May 1983 1987 → Turnout 1,392,131 (70.0%) 42 39 | Registered 1,989,993 1983 1983 608,637 543,861 | |
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The 1983 Castile and León parliamentary election was held on Sunday, 8 May 1983, to elect the 1st Courts of Castile and León, the regional legislature of the Spanish autonomous community of Castile and León. At stake were all 84 seats in the Courts, determining the President of the Junta of Castile and León.
After the election, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) emerged as the largest party, but fell 1 seat short of an overall majority. The People's Coalition, an electoral alliance led by the right-wing People's Alliance (AP) and including the People's Democratic Party (PDP) and the Liberal Union (UL), became the second largest force in the community closely behind the PSOE, with 39 seats to PSOE's 42.
Adolfo Suárez's Democratic and Social Centre as well as the small Liberal Democratic Party (PDL) both entered the Courts with 2 and 1 seats, respectively. The Communist Party of Spain (PCE), on the other hand, performed poorly, being unable to win any seats and obtaining 2.4% of the share.
Electoral system
The number of seats in the Castile and León Courts was set to a fixed-number of 84. All Courts members were elected in 9 multi-member districts, corresponding to Castile and León's nine 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 1/1983, which distributed the Courts seats as follows: Avila (7), Burgos (11), Leon (15), Palencia (7), Salamanca (11), Segovia (6), Soria (5), Valladolid (14) and Zamora (8).
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.