22 May 2011 2015 → 16 October 2002 27 July 2007 67 seats, 53.3% 42 seats, 33.6% | Registered 4,622,750 3.7% 27 July 2007 20 March 2009 Start date May 22, 2011 | |
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Turnout 2,993,235 (65.9%)
1.4 pp Winner Esperanza Aguirre | ||
The 2011 Madrilenian parliamentary election was held on Sunday, 22 May 2011, to elect the 9th Assembly of Madrid, the regional legislature of the Spanish autonomous community of Madrid. All 129 seats in the Assembly were up for election, an increase of nine compared to the previous election. The election was held simultaneously with regional elections in 12 other autonomous communities and local elections all throughout Spain.
Contents
The election was won by the People's Party (PP), which had formed the regional government since the 1995 election. Overall, the PP under incumbent President Esperanza Aguirre won 72 seats, although the party's overall vote share decreased. In contrast, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) under former Mayor of Parla Tomás Goméz had their worst result in terms of votes and seats up until that date. The third largest party, United Left (IU), polled their highest share of the vote since 1995, whereas Union, Progress and Democracy (UPyD), a party formed after the 2007 election, surpassed the 5% threshold and entered the Assembly for the first time.
Electoral system
The Assembly of Madrid was elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional representation. Under the regional Statute of Autonomy, the Assembly was entitled to one member per each 50,000 inhabitants or fraction greater than 25,000, according to the most updated census data. As the updated population census for the 2011 election was the corresponding to year 2010 (6,458,684), the Assembly size was set to 129. All seats were allocated to a single multi-member district, with a threshold of 5% of valid votes—which included blank ballots—. Parties not reaching the threshold were not taken into consideration for the seat distribution.
Voting was on the basis of universal suffrage, with all residents over eighteen and in the full enjoyment of all political rights entitled to vote—however, amendments to the electoral law in 2011 required for Spaniards abroad to apply for voting before being permitted to vote, a system known as "requested" or expat vote (Spanish: Voto rogado)—. Concurrently, residents meeting the previous criteria and not involved in any cause of ineligibility were eligible for the Assembly. Gender quotas were introduced in 2007, requiring for party lists to be composed of at least 40% of candidates of either gender and for each group of five candidates to contain at least two males and two females. Groups of electors were required to obtain the signatures of at least 0.5% of registered electors in the district in order to be able to field candidates.
A 1998 amendment to the Statute of Autonomy granted the President the ability to dissolve the chamber and call a snap election, but limiting the exercise of such prerogative to the second or third years of the legislature. Elections were fixed for the fourth Sunday of May every four years, with early dissolutions not changing the period to the next ordinary election, meaning that elected deputies in a snap election merely served out what remained of their ordinary four-year parliamentary terms. The Assembly was to be automatically dissolved in the event of unsuccessful investiture attempts failing to elect a regional President within a two month-period from the first ballot, triggering a snap election likewise.
Opinion polls
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. 65 seats were required for an absolute majority in the Assembly of Madrid (61 until 1 January 2010).
Exit poll