2004 Spanish general election

Legislative elections were held in Spain on March 14, 2004. At stake were all seats in both houses of the Spanish Parliament, the Cortes Generales. In a result which defied most predictions, the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, appears to have won a plurality of seats in the Congress of Deputies, and will be able to form a government with the support of minor parties.

In the Senate, the result was different, with the PP winning 101 seats to the PSOE's 82. It appears that voters swung to the PSOE in the vote for the Congress of Deputies, which determines the government, but stuck with the PP in the voting for the Senate, thus placing a brake on a socialist government.

The governing People's Party (PP) was led into the campaign by Mariano Rajoy, successor to outgoing Prime Minister José María Aznar.

In the aftermath of the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks, three days before election day, the contending parties all suspended their political campaigning. Commentators speculated that reaction against the attacks would increase support for the People's Party at the elections if ETA was to blame, but would hurt the party if al-Qaida was held to be responsible.

On March 13 demonstrators outside Popular Party headquarters in several cities shouted "We want to know the truth." Some time later, the Minister of the Interior said that three Moroccans had been arrested because of the relation with the attacks.

The victory was celebrated in the street outside the PSOE headquarters in Ferraz Street with shouts of "No war!" Rodríguez Zapatero has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq by June.

Another feature of the result was increased representation for the Republican Left of Catalonia, a minor left-wing party which has formed a coalition government with the PSOE in Catalonia. The Republican Left's leader, Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira, recently held meetings with the Basque separatist group ETA in France.

Elections to the regional parliament of Andalusia were held on the same day. The PSOE retained office in these elections with an increased majority. (El Mundo - results)

Electoral system

These were the ninth elections since the restoration of democratic government in 1975. Each of Spain's autonomous communities elects a number of deputies and senators in rough proportion to its population. The electoral district is the province. Autonomous communities range in size from one to nine provinces.

All 350 deputies are elected on party lists, by roughly proportional representation in each electoral district. The method used to allocate the seats is the D'Hondt method, which favours larger parties over smaller ones. The candidate of the party gathering the largest bloc in the Congress of Deputies will then become Prime Minister of Spain, unless a coalition of different parties has a majority of seats.

At the 2000 general election, the People's Party won 183 seats, the Socialists won 125, the Catalan nationalist party Convergence and Unity won 15 and the United Left (a coalition around the Communist Party) won 8. Minor parties won the remaining 19 seats.

Results

← Spanish general election, 2004 →
Party	Votes	%	Change	Seats	Change
Socialist Party	10,908,349	42.6	+8.4	164	+39
People's Party	9,629,691	37.6	-6.9	148	-35
United Left	1,269,468	5.0	-1.0	5	-4
Convergence and Unity	829,046	3.2	-1.0	10	-5
Republican Left of Catalonia	649,999	2.5	-1.0	8	+7
Basque Nationalist Party	417,154	1.6	+0.1	7	-
Canary Islands Coalition	220,543	0.8	-0.2	3	-1
Gallician Nationalist Bloc	205,613	0.8	-0.4	2	-1
Aragonist Junta	93,865	0.4	+0.1	1	-
We the Basque People	80,613	0.3	+0.1	1	-
Navarre Yes	60,497	0.2	-	1	new
Partido Andalucista				0	-1

Source: Spanish Interior Ministry

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