Next Spanish general election

Electoral system

The Spanish Cortes Generales are regarded as an imperfect bicameral system. The Congress of Deputies has greater legislative power than the Senate, having the ability to grant or revoke confidence from a Prime Minister and to override Senate vetoes by an absolute majority of votes. Nonetheless, the Senate possesses a few exclusive, yet limited in number functions—such as its role in constitutional amendment—which are not subject to the Congress' override.

For the Congress of Deputies, 348 seats are allocated to 50 multi-member districts—each corresponding to a province—, elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional representation. Ceuta and Melilla elected one member each using plurality voting, for a total of 350 seats. Each district is entitled to an initial minimum of two seats, with the remaining 248 allocated among the 50 provinces in proportion to their populations. A threshold of 3% of valid votes—which includes blank ballots—is applied in each constituency, with parties not reaching the threshold not taken into consideration for seat distribution.

For the Senate, each of the 47 peninsular constituencies is allocated four seats. For insular provinces, such as the Balearic and the Canary Islands, districts are the islands themselves, with the larger—Majorca, Gran Canaria and Tenerife—being allocated three seats each, and the smaller—Menorca, Ibiza-Formentera, Fuerteventura, La Gomera, El Hierro, Lanzarote and La Palma—one each. Ceuta and Melilla elect two seats each, for a total of 208 directly elected seats, using an open list partial block voting. Instead of voting for parties, electors vote for individual candidates. In districts electing four seats, electors can vote for up to three candidates; in those with two or three seats, for up to two candidates; and for one candidate in single-member constituencies. Additionally, autonomous communities can appoint at least one senator each and are entitled to one additional seat per each million inhabitants.

Voting is on the basis of universal suffrage, with all nationals 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, nationals meeting the previous criteria and not involved in any cause of ineligibility are eligible for both the Congress and the Senate. 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 are required to obtain the signatures of at least 1% of registered electors in a particular district in order to be able to field candidates, whereas parties and coalitions left out from both chambers in the previous election are required to obtain the signatures of at least 0.1% of registered electors in the districts they intend to contest.

The Prime Minister has the ability to dissolve the chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election; otherwise, elected deputies and senators serve for four year terms, starting from election day. Additionally, both chambers are to be automatically dissolved in the event of unsuccessful investiture attempts failing to elect a Prime Minister within a two month-period from the first ballot, triggering a snap election likewise. After the experience of the political deadlock leading to the 2016 election, the electoral law was amended in order to introduce a special, simplified process for election re-runs, including a shortening of deadlines, the lifting of signature requirements if these were already met for the immediately previous election and the possibility of maintaining lists and coalitions.

Economy

Immediately after the election, as ECOFIN ministers activated the sanction procedure to Spain on 12 July as a result of the country not meeting its deficit targets—which could result in a fine worth €2 billion fine and a freezing of Structural Funding—the PP caretaker government announced a future rise of the corporate tax with which it expected to collect an additional €6 billion, so as to tackle public deficit and trying to avoid the fine. This move was criticized internally, as Rajoy's caretaker government could not implement the measure until the completion of the ongoing government formation process, as well as because it clashed with one of PP's recent election pledges to lower taxes.

PSOE crisis

Criticism of Pedro Sánchez for his electoral results and his hardline stance on Rajoy's investiture, said to be a contributing factor to the country's political deadlock, reached a boiling point after poor PSOE showings in the Basque and Galician elections. Amid calls for his resignation, Sánchez responded by announcing a party primary and congress for October–December 2016, enraging dissenters and prompting half the members of the party executive committee—the party's day-to-day ruling body—to resign on 28 September, in order to prompt Sánchez's sacking and take command themselves.

Sánchez refused to step down and entrenched himself within the party's headquarters, generating the largest crisis in the party's history, as neither side acknowledged the other's legitimacy to act in the party's name. This situation ended when Sánchez resigned after losing a key ballot to Susana Díaz's-led rebels in the party's federal committee on 1 October, being replaced by a caretaker committee and leaving behind a shattered PSOE. Subsequently, the new party's leadership chose to allow a PP minority government in order to end the 10-month political deadlock.

Potential

Potential

Potential

Latest possible date

The next general election cannot be held later than Sunday 26 July 2020. This date is determined as follows: