Spanish general election, 2008

Electoral system

The Spanish Cortes Generales were regarded as an imperfect bicameral system. The Congress of Deputies had 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 possessed a few exclusive, yet limited in number functions—such as its role in constitutional amendment—which were not subject to the Congress' override.

For the Congress of Deputies, 348 seats were 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 was 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 included blank ballots—was 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 was allocated four seats. For insular provinces, such as the Balearic and the Canary Islands, districts were 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 elected two seats each, for a total of 208 directly elected seats, using an open list partial block voting. Instead of voting for parties, electors would vote for individual candidates. In districts electing four seats, electors could 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 could appoint at least one senator each and were entitled to one additional seat per each million inhabitants.

Voting was on the basis of universal suffrage, with all nationals over eighteen and in the full enjoyment of all political rights entitled to vote. Concurrently, nationals meeting the previous criteria and not involved in any cause of ineligibility were 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 were required to obtain the signatures of at least 1% of registered electors in a particular district in order to be able to field candidates.

The Prime Minister had the ability to dissolve the chambers at any given time—either jointly or separately—and call a snap election; otherwise, elected deputies and senators served for four year terms, starting from election day. Additionally, both chambers were 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.

Candidates and coalitions

By tradition, the first candidate on each Madrid party list for the Congress of Deputies is the Prime Ministerial candidate for that party. Nationalist parties who did not expect to win enough seats to be contenders for the office of Prime Minister typically designated one of their list leaders as their main candidate. Those candidates were generally featured more prominently in the Spanish national media than other list leaders or candidates. Regional, provincial and local media nearly always covers the activities of the Prime Ministerial candidates, together with the leading candidates in their area.

Spanish Socialist Workers' Party

As in 2004, the governing Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) was led by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Mr Zapatero was the only PSOE candidate who sought the nomination and he was therefore proclaimed candidate on 25 November 2007 at a rally in Fuenlabrada, Madrid. The PSOE ran in all Spanish constituencies. In Catalonia, the Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC) operated as part of the PSOE's ticket.

The current Deputy Prime Minister María Teresa Fernández de la Vega led the party's list in the province of Valencia. After the election, she continued as Deputy Prime Minister.

José Bono Martínez, former Minister of Defence and President of Castile-La Mancha for 21 years, led the list in Toledo. After the election, he was elected President (i.e., Speaker) of the Congress of Deputies.

After some discussion due to the need for ensuring the future support of the Prime Minister for his economic policy and his intentions to retire, the current Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, Pedro Solbes, was second on the Madrid list. He continued as Minister of Economy after the election.

Other prominent politicians who led provincial lists for the Socialist Party included the current Minister of Culture, César Antonio Molina, in A Coruña, the current Home Minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, in Cádiz, the Minister of Public Works, Magdalena Álvarez, in Málaga, the former Minister of Housing (and later Minister of Defence) Carme Chacón, in Barcelona and the former Home Minister and current Socialist Parliamentary Group spokesman, José Antonio Alonso, in León.

There were relatively few disputes about the composition of the election lists, except for minor problems on the Balearic Island of Formentera and in the capital. In Madrid the selection of the remaining candidates on the list after the socialist leadership (Prime Minister Zapatero, Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Solbes, and the electoral coordinator Jesús Caldera) was unclear, since the regional socialist federation had recently changed their leadership. Besides this, Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), an old federated socialist union, suggested presenting joint lists. The final decision by the PSOE leadership to include a deputy linked to UGT, Manuel de la Rocha, ended the discussion.

People's Party

The People's Party (PP) was led by Mariano Rajoy, former Deputy Prime Minister and successor to the former Prime Minister José María Aznar. He was nominated as candidate by the National Board of Directors of the party on 10 September 2007. PP ran in all the constituencies with its sister party the Navarrese People's Union (UPN) acting as part of the PP ticket in Navarre.

Rajoy chose Manuel Pizarro as his candidate for Second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance. Pizarro is the former chairman of Endesa, where he was noted for his criticism of the economic policies of Zapatero's Government.

The People's Party suggested reducing taxes and raising the minimum threshold for Income Tax.

Some controversy took place when the Mayor of Madrid, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, sought a place on the Madrid list for the Congress, something which increased his rivalry with fellow Madrid PP rank Esperanza Aguirre (president of the Community of Madrid and leader of the party in this Autonomous Community). The subsequent People's Party leadership's refusal was considered by the press as a victory for Aguirre, preventing him from taking advantage in the succession of Rajoy in the eventuality of an electoral defeat. Several left leaning media and political parties referred to this as a victory of the most radical, reactionary, sectors close to Aguirre over the so-called moderate way represented by Gallardón. Sources close to the People's Party denied such interpretations. Some newspapers even speculated about the possibility of internal conflicts between the supporters of each politician. However, the appearance of both politicians at electoral events together stopped or at least reduced criticism.

With the People's Party defeat, there was some speculation over Rajoy's eventual resigning for future electoral contests. Then, at a meeting of his party's Executive Committee on 11 March, Rajoy dispelled doubts about his future by stating that he would stand again as party leader at a party congress in June.

United Left

United Left (IU) is a coalition of several leftist movements. During the previous legislature, there had been internal fighting between the main component of the coalition, the Communist Party (PCE) and the faction headed by Llamazares. This led to a primary election between October and November 2007. This internal election was contested by Gaspar Llamazares, the then General Coordinator of United Left and Margarita Sanz, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Valencian Country - the Valencian federation of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). On 14 November Llamazares was declared the winner, beating his contender by a wide margin. After that, three members of the Communist Party, who were most critical, including the former leader of it, Felipe Alcaraz, were expelled from the Directive Committee.

IU ran in all constituencies; in many of them, they ran in coalition with other parties. In Catalonia, IU ran with Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds. Felipe Alcaraz, executive chairman of PCE, announced his intention not to seek nomination for Seville, another of the traditional PCE/IU seats and district where he had been deputy from 1993 to 2004, in the Andalusian Council of IU, after losing the provincial assembly, he was substituted by the former mayor of Carmona Sebastián Martín Recio who failed to gain a seat.

The Assembly of EUPV (IU's federation in the Valencian Community) elected Antonio Montalbán as its leading candidate for Valencia, one of the traditional districts where IU or PCE have obtained deputies, against incumbent Isaura Navarro after heated debate on ideology matters and different stances regarding the convenience of keeping a coalition with another party, the Valencian Nationalist Bloc (BNV). The coalition with the BNV was finally discarded by the party Executive. This led to a schism within EUPV which saw incumbent EUPV MP Isaura Navarro, among others, defecting to a newly created party made up of critics with the direction of EUPV. The new party was named Iniciativa pel País Valencià (IpV) and ran in these elections in coalition with the BNV, the party which had been discarded by EUPV. Ultimately EUPV failed to hold their seat in Valencia (IpV-BLOC did not win any seat in this constituency either).

The outcome of these elections proved a hard blow for IU, which got its worst ever result, obtaining two (S) down from five at the Spanish Parliament, subsequently Llamazares resigned in the immediate aftermath of the elections.

Convergence and Union

In November 2007, Convergence and Union (CiU) designated their leader in Congress and leader of the Democratic Union of Catalonia Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida as main candidate. CiU only contested the four Catalan provinces.

Republican Left of Catalonia

In August 2007, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC in its Catalan acronym) designated their spokesman in the Catalan Parliament Joan Ridao i Martín as their leader for the elections. ERC ran in Catalonia and in the Valencian Community through its local branch ERPV. It also participated in an electoral coalition with other nationalist parties in the Balearic Islands constituency called Unitat per les Illes.

ERC was the party with the biggest loss in these elections, obtaining three MPs, down from their previous eight seats. These bad results opened an ongoing internal dispute over ideology and strategies.

Basque Nationalist Party

The Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ/PNV) ran only in the three Basque provinces. Josu Erkoreka headed the ticket in Vizcaya, the most populous on the three provinces. In Navarre they were part of the Nafarroa Bai coalition.

Minor parties in Congress

Campaigns

Although the official electoral campaign period in Spain only lasts for the 15 days before the election, (with the exception of the day just before the election), many parties, especially the PP and PSOE, start their "pre-campaigns" months in advance, often before having finalised their electoral lists.

PSOE

The first phase campaign was done under the slogan "Con Z de Zapatero" (With Z of Zapatero), a joke based on the Prime Minister and socialist candidate's habit of tending to pronounce words ending with D as if they ended with Z. The campaign was linked to terms like equality (Igualdad-Igualdaz) or solidarity (Solidaridad-Solidaridaz), emphasizing the policies carried out by the current government. The second phase was done under the slogan "La Mirada Positiva" (The Positive outlook), emphasising the future government platform, and "Vota con todas tus fuerzas" (Vote with all of your strength), aiming to mobilize the indecisive or potentially abstaining voters. Another common slogan through all the campaign was "Motivos para creer" (Reasons to believe in).

PP

For the pre-campaign the PP used the slogan "Con Rajoy es Posible" (With Rajoy it's Possible). Usually emphasizing PP's campaign proposals, such as "Llegar a fin de mes, Con Rajoy es Posible" (Making ends meet, With Rajoy it's Possible). IU accused PP of copying its slogan from the last municipal elections

IU

IU chose the pre-campaign slogan "LlamazarES + Más Izquierda" (LlamazarES (is) More Left), calling attention to their position as the third national party.

The economy

The economy became a major campaign issue due to a number of factors:

The sudden emergence of the economy as a political issue came after several years of steady economic growth, and led some observers to suggest that maybe the government would have benefitted from calling an earlier election. In addition to those factors both the PP and the PSOE made competing proposals on taxation.