25 September 2016 Next → 15 January 2006 19 August 2016 41 seats, 45.8% 9 seats, 13.9% | Registered 2,701,932 0.2% 19 August 2016 28 May 2016 | |
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Turnout 1,448,962 (53.6%)
1.3 pp | ||
The 2016 Galician parliamentary election was held on Sunday, 25 September 2016, to elect the 10th Parliament of Galicia, the regional legislature of the Spanish autonomous community of Galicia. All 75 seats in the Parliament were up for election. The election was held simultaneously with a regional election in the Basque Country.
Contents
Alberto Núñez Feijóo announced the election would be brought forward to September, after initially scheduling to held it throughout October, after Basque Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu announced he would held the Basque election on 25 September. Feijóo argued his decision in that it would make "no sense" to hold the election just mere weeks after the Basque poll, specially considering the state of political instability dominating the national landscape and the possible backlash the regional elections could have on parties' stances during the government formation process.
The election took place in a situation in which the Spanish political landscape had undergone a major transformation in a short time, with a decrease of PP and PSOE nationally and the emergence of new options such as Podemos and C's.
Electoral system
The 75 members of the Parliament of Galicia are elected in 4 multi-member districts using the D'Hondt method and a closed-list proportional representation for four-year terms. Each district is entitled to an initial minimum of 10 seats, with the remaining 35 seats being allocated among the four provinces in proportion to their populations. Only lists polling above 5% of the total vote in each district (which includes blank ballots—for none of the above) are entitled to enter the seat distribution. However, in some districts there is a higher effective threshold at the constituency level, depending on the district magnitude.
For the 2016 election, seats are distributed as follows:
Background
After his defeat in the 2012 election, Pachi Vázquez announced his intention to abandon Socialists' Party of Galicia's leadership within a year and to allow for a primary election to be held to elect his successor. The primaries were held on 7 September 2013, in which José Ramón Gómez Besteiro emerged as winner with 77% of the votes, with his appointment ratified at a special party congress held on 29 September.
However, Gómez Besteiro came under public scrutiny after being indicted on 3 July 2015 for four crimes, including influence peddling, bribery, prevarication and a crime against regional planning, allegedly committed during Besteiro's time in the local government of Lugo in 2005. On 12 March 2016, with just a few months to go for the next regional election to be held, Besteiro was accused of a further six crimes—new bribery, prevarication and influence peddling crimes, as well as abuse of public administrations, subsidy fraud and embezzlement of public funds—which prompted him to announce his declination to be the party's candidate to the Xunta de Galicia in the next regional election the following day. Mounting pressure from his party's colleagues, however, eventually led to Besteiro resigning as party leader on 18 March. Xoaquín Fernández Leiceaga was elected on 28 May through a primary election to be Besteiro's replacement as candidate to the Xunta, while a management committee took charge of the party.
Opinion polling
Individual poll results are listed in the table below in reverse chronological order, showing the most recent first, and using the date the survey's fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication. If such date is unknown, the date of publication is given instead. The highest percentage figure in each polling survey is displayed with its background shaded in the leading party's colour. In the instance of a tie, the figures with the highest percentages are shaded. in the case of seat projections, they are displayed in bold and in a different font. The lead column on the right shows the percentage-point difference between the two parties with the highest figures. 38 seats were required for an absolute majority in the Parliament of Galicia.
Poll conducted after legal ban on opinion polls Exit poll