25 May 2003 2007 → 10 July 2002 24 September 2000 49 seats, 47.9% 35 seats, 33.9% | Registered 3,423,098 1.8% 24 September 2000 1997 | |
 | ||
Turnout 2,447,788 (71.5%)
3.7 pp Winner Francisco Camps | ||
The 2003 Valencian parliamentary election was held on Sunday, 25 May 2003, to elect the 6th democratically elected Corts Valencianes, the regional legislature of the Spanish autonomous community of the Land of Valencia. All 89 seats in the Corts were up for election. The election was held simultaneously with regional elections in 12 other autonomous communities and local elections all throughout Spain.
Despite growing discontent with the nationwide José María Aznar's government, the People's Party (PP) was able to comfortably retain its absolute majority in the Courts, losing only 1 seat compared to 1999, which went to United Left (IU). The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), despite becoming the party that grew the most from 1999, was unable to translate those new votes into any new seats.
Valencian Union (UV), the former coalition partner of the PP during the first Zaplana Government (1999-2003), continued its decline into irrelevance and fell below 3%, depriving it of any possibility of overcoming the 5% required threshold to enter the Courts.
Francisco Camps became the new President of the Valencian Community succeeding José Luis Olivas, who had replaced Eduardo Zaplana in 2002 after the latter was named Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in Aznar's Cabinet.
Electoral system
The number of seats in the Corts Valencianes was set to a fixed-number of 89. All Courts members were elected in 3 multi-member districts, corresponding to the Valencian Community's three provinces, using the D'Hondt method and a closed-list proportional representation system. Each district was entitled to an initial minimum of 20 seats, with the remaining 29 seats allocated among the three provinces in proportion to their populations, on the required condition that the number of inhabitants per seat in each district did not exceed 3 times those of any other. For the 2003 election, seats were distributed as follows: Alicante (30), Castellon (23) and Valencia (36).
Voting was on the basis of universal suffrage in a secret ballot. Only lists polling above 5% of valid votes in all of the community (which include blank ballots—for none of the above) were entitled to enter the seat distribution. This meant that in the case a list polled above 5% in one or more of the districts but below 5% in the community totals, it would remain outside of the seat apportionment.