Registered 2,308,360 4.0% 34 seats, 55.6% 18 seats, 30.9% 3 3 | 16 October 2002 3 October 2010 31 15 Date 22 May 2011 | |
Turnout 1,551,613 (67.2%)
1.3 pp Winner Alberto Ruiz‑Gallardón | ||
The 2011 Madrid City Council election was held on Sunday, 22 May 2011, to elect the 9th Madrid City Council, the unicameral local legislature of the municipality of Madrid. At stake were all 57 seats in the City Council, determining the Mayor of Madrid.
The People's Party (PP) won its 6th consecutive absolute majority of seats in the City Council, albeit with a diminished voter base, suffering its worst loss of support in the city up until that time (120,000 votes, 6 percentage points and 3 seats were lost from 2007). Only the collapse of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) vote, which obtained the worst result of its history as a result of the criticised José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's premiership in the national government, was larger. United Left (IU) benefitted from the PSOE debacle, while newly founded Union, Progress and Democracy (UPyD) attracted votes from sectors disenchanted with both PSOE and PP and entered the City Council in the first election in which they stood.
Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, who was re-elected for a third term in office, left the mayoralty in late 2011 to become Justice Minister, after his party won the 2011 general election and Mariano Rajoy was elected Prime Minister. He was succeeded as mayor by Ana Botella.
Electoral system
The number of seats in the Madrid City Council was determined by the population count. According to the municipal electoral law, the population-seat relationship on each municipality was to be established on the following scale:
Additionally, for populations greater than 100,000, 1 seat was to be added per each 100,000 inhabitants or fraction, according to the most updated census data, and adding 1 more seat if the resulting seat count gives an even number. As the updated population census for the 2011 election was 3,273,049, the Madrid City Council size was set to 57 seats.
All City Council members were elected in a single multi-member district, consisting of the Madrid municipality, using the D'Hondt method and a closed-list proportional representation system. Voting was on the basis of universal suffrage in a secret ballot. Only lists polling above 5% of valid votes in all of the municipality (which include blank ballots—for none of the above) were entitled to enter the seat distribution.
The Spanish municipal electoral law established a clause stating that, if no candidate was to gather an absolute majority of votes to be elected as mayor of a municipality, the candidate of the most-voted party would be automatically elected to the post.