A regional election was held in Andalusia on 22 March 2015 to elect the 10th Parliament of the autonomous community. All 109 seats in the Parliament were up for election.
President Susana DÃÂaz chose to terminate the coalition government between her Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOEâÂÂA) and United Left (IULVâÂÂCA), dissolving the Parliament and calling a snap election for 22 March 2015. Andalusia had been traditionally considered a PSOE stronghold, being the only region in Spain in which no other party had led the regional government since the Spanish transition to democracy.
The PSOEâÂÂA regained first place from a declining People's Party (PP). Suffering from voters' anger at Mariano Rajoy's national government management of the economic crisis and the corruption scandals affecting the party nationwide, the PP scored its worst result since 1990. The election also saw a strong performance by newcomers Podemos (Spanish for "We can") and Citizens (C's), which faced their first electoral test since the 2014 European Parliament election. IULVâÂÂCA was decimated by Podemos's surge and obtained its worst historical showing.
After the election, the PP announced it would block any PSOE attempt to form a government, a shock to many after the party had assured during the electoral campaign that it would allow the most-voted party to access government. Podemos and C's remained reluctant to lend support to Susana DÃÂaz's investiture, whereas IU was not willing to align with the Socialists again after their previous alliance broke up. In the end, however, after the 2015 Spanish regional and municipal elections were held, C's agreed to support DÃÂaz investiture on less harsher conditions than initially required, in order to end the parliamentary deadlock and prevent a new election.
Despite losing the 2012 regional election to the People's Party (PP), which won a regional election in Andalusia for the first time since the establishment of the autonomous community, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) under José Antonio Griñán was able to remain in office for a ninth consecutive term after forming a coalition government with United Left/The GreensâÂÂAssembly for Andalusia (IULVâÂÂCA).
In July 2013, José Antonio Griñán announced his intention to resign from office in order to "preserve the Regional Government from the erosion of the ERE scandal", a large slush fund corruption scheme involving former leading figures of the regional PSOE's branch, including former development minister Magdalena ÃÂlvarez, with former Andalusian president Manuel Chaves and himself being accused of knowing and concealing such a plot. Griñán was succeeded by Susana DÃÂaz at the helm of the regional government.
Despite the apparent parliamentary comfort of the ruling coalition, friction between both PSOE and IU remained an issue throughout the entire legislature, especially after Susana DÃÂaz took over the government in September 2013. In April 2014, an episode of IU's housing counsellor awarding several government houses to homeless families without the president's consent resulted in the counsellor seeing her competences removed and in the coalition pact nearly breaking up. In January 2015, tension between both coalition partners reached its peak after IU proposed holding a referendum among its members in June 2015 on whether to remain or withdraw from the government. In response, Susana DÃÂaz declared that "we need a government which enjoys a stability that currently does not exist", opening the door for a snap election to be held within a short time. On 20 January DÃÂaz met all eight PSOE provincial leaders in order to seek support within the party for a snap election in March 2015, which she received; subsequently, mutual attacks between both PSOE and IU, accusing each other of breaching the coalition agreement, made it clear that the only solution to the ongoing governmental crisis would come by the calling of a snap election.
On 17 February 2015, one month short of the election, the Spanish Supreme Court charged former Andalusian presidents Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán in the ERE scandal for their possible responsibility in the misuse of the misappropriated public funds. The PSOE insisted on the same day that it would not require Chaves and Griñán to give up their seats in the Congress of Deputies and Senate, despite both incumbent president Susana DÃÂaz and PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez having assured in the past that they would do so in the event of both of them being charged.
Under the 2007 Statute of Autonomy, the Parliament of Andalusia was the unicameral legislature of the homonymous autonomous community, having legislative power in devolved matters, as well as the ability to grant or withdraw confidence from a regional president.
Voting for the Parliament was based on universal suffrage, comprising all Spanish nationals over 18 years of age, registered in Andalusia and with full political rights, provided that they had not been deprived of the right to vote by a final court ruling, nor being legally incapacitated. Additionally, non-resident citizens were required to apply for voting, a system known as "begged" voting ().
The Parliament of Andalusia had a minimum of 109 seats, with the electoral law fixing its size at that number. All were elected in eight multi-member constituenciesâÂÂcorresponding to the provinces of AlmerÃÂa, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville, each of which was assigned an initial minimum of eight seats and the remaining 45 distributed in proportion to population (with the number of seats in each province not exceeding two times that of any other)âÂÂusing the D'Hondt method and closed-list proportional voting, with a three percent-threshold of valid votes (including blank ballots) in each constituency. The use of this electoral method resulted in a higher effective threshold depending on district magnitude and vote distribution.
As a result of the aforementioned allocation, each Parliament constituency was entitled the following seats:
The law did not provide for by-elections to fill vacant seats; instead, any vacancies arising after the proclamation of candidates and during the legislative term were filled by the next candidates on the party lists or, when required, by designated substitutes.
The term of the Parliament of Andalusia expired four years after the date of its previous election, unless it was dissolved earlier. The election decree was required to be issued no later than the twenty-fifth day prior to the scheduled expiration date of parliament and published on the following day in the Official Gazette of the Regional Government of Andalusia (BOJA), with election day taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication (barring any date within from 1 July to 31 August). The previous election was held on 25 March 2012, which meant that the chamber's term would have expired on 25 March 2016. The election decree was required to be published in the BOJA no later than 1 March 2016, with the election taking place on the fifty-fourth day from publication, setting the latest possible date for election day on 24 April 2016.
The regional president had the prerogative to dissolve the Parliament of Andalusia at any given time and call a snap election, provided that no motion of no confidence was in process and that dissolution did not occur before one year after a previous one. In the event of an investiture process failing to elect a regional president within a two-month period from the first ballot, the Parliament was to be automatically dissolved and a fresh election called.
An extraordinary parliamentary plenary session was held on 26 January, where DÃÂaz announced the dissolution of parliament and the subsequent calling of a snap election for 22 March. DÃÂaz herself had previously declared, during a PSOE rally in Seville, that "It is time for the Andalusian people to speak" and "We shall obtain the [people's] confidence in the ballots". Spanish media speculated that the snap election came as a result of different factors; namely, Susana DÃÂaz's private aspirations to the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party's leadershipâÂÂdespite her publicly refusing itâÂÂ, as well as both Podemos's surge in opinion polls and to prevent the party's exhaustion after all 2015 electoral callsâÂÂlocal and regional in May, Catalan in September and general in autumnâÂÂ, in a time when opinion polls were still favorable to the PSOE in Andalusia.
The Parliament of Andalusia was officially dissolved on 27 January 2015 with the publication of the corresponding decree in the BOJA, setting election day for 22 March and scheduling for the chamber to reconvene on 16 April.
The table below shows the composition of the parliamentary groups in the chamber at the time of dissolution.
The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, alliances and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form an alliance ahead of an election were required to inform the relevant electoral commission within ten days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of at least one percent of the electorate in the constituencies for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. Additionally, a balanced composition of men and women was required in the electoral lists, so that candidates of either sex made up at least 40 percent of the total composition.
Below is a list of the main parties and electoral alliances which contested the election:
The tables below list opinion polling results in reverse chronological order, showing the most recent first and using the dates when the survey fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication. Where the fieldwork dates are 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. If a tie ensues, this is applied to the figures with the highest percentages. The "Lead" column on the right shows the percentage-point difference between the parties with the highest percentages in a poll.
The table below lists weighted voting intention estimates. Refusals are generally excluded from the party vote percentages, while question wording and the treatment of "don't know" responses and those not intending to vote may vary between polling organisations. When available, seat projections determined by the polling organisations are displayed below (or in place of) the percentages in a smaller font; 55 seats were required for an absolute majority in the Parliament of Andalusia.
The table below lists raw, unweighted voting preferences.
The table below lists opinion polling on the victory preferences for each party in the event of a regional election taking place.
The table below lists opinion polling on the perceived likelihood of victory for each party in the event of a regional election taking place.
The table below lists opinion polling on leader preferences to become president of the Regional Government of Andalusia.
The table below shows registered voter turnout on election day, without including non-resident citizens.
The result of the election was a hung parliament, with the PSOE winning the same number of seats it had previouslyâÂÂ47. Still, it performed slightly better than what most polls had predicted, despite falling eight seats short of the absolute majority they had set as an objective. The PP plummeted to just 33 seats after scoring its best ever result in the 2012 election, suffering the burden of PM Mariano Rajoy's governance in the Spanish Government. This represented the party's worst result at a regional election in Andalusia since the 1990 election, falling below 30% of the vote. The main beneficiaries of the election were parties alternative to the considered "traditional" ones â Podemos and Citizens, both of them, despite polling slightly lower than what early polls predicted, winning seats for the first time in the Parliament of Andalusia.
The post-election scenario, however, turned more difficult than what was originally expected. IU collapse from 12 to 5 seats turned it into a minority force in the new parliament, preventing the PSOE from attempting a renewal of the 2012âÂÂ2015 coalitionâÂÂa scenario which IU itself refused, due to the abrupt dissolution of the previous agreement. The PP, initially widely expected to abstain in Susana DÃÂaz's investiture voting in order to allow "a government of the most-voted party", announced instead that it would vote against DÃÂaz's investiture.
Newcomers Podemos and Citizens became decisive in the election of any future cabinet, yet remained reluctant to support a new PSOE government. The parties presented a series of harsh pre-agreement conditions, regarding political corruption and other issues, for the PSOE to comply with in order to allow for agreement talks:
Susana DÃÂaz immediately ruled out the PP conditions, requesting party regional leader Juanma Moreno to "act with responsibility, without pretending weird exchanges that the people would not understand". Moreno, in response, accused DÃÂaz of "arrogancy" and told her that "with 47 seats one can't pretend to negotiate as if one had 55 [an absolute majority of seats]".
Susana DÃÂaz's investiture for a second term as president of Andalusia remained unclear for one month. She explicitly expressed her intention to form a minority cabinet, ruling out a coalition with any other party; however, until June 2015 she was not able to prevent all other parties from blocking her election. Andalusian law established that if no candidate was elected president in the two months following the first investiture ballot, then parliament was to be automatically dissolved and a new election would be held no later than September 2015.
Susana DÃÂaz was unable to get a favorable vote in either of the three votings that took place in 5, 8 and 14 May, as all four PP, Podemos, C's and IU voted against her election. Further, negotiations between DÃÂaz's PSOE and the opposition parties broke off when, on 13 MayâÂÂthe eve of the third investiture voteâÂÂit was unveiled that the Andalusian government had awarded the exploitation of the Aznalcóllar mine to a governmental-favored firm through illegal means and "without observing the slightest rigor" in FebruaryâÂÂMarch 2015, previously and during the regional election campaign. With DÃÂaz's government refusing to give explanations over the scandal, all four parties reassured their negative to allow for DÃÂaz's investiture in the 14 May vote, with then-acting president Susana DÃÂaz blaming all four opposition parties of imposing a "political blockade" over Andalusia and threatening them with a new election in the event of her failing to get elected.
PP regional leader Juanma Moreno accused DÃÂaz of "arrogance" and of "asking them to allow her investiture without yielding to their conditions", also asking himself why DÃÂaz kept holding investiture votings if no inter-party agreement had been reached. Teresa RodrÃÂguez from Podemos also criticised DÃÂaz for not accepting her party's conditions, blaming the PSOE for the political instability in the region and stating that a new election would mean the PSOE's failure in forming a government through dialogue. All opposition parties also reiterated their position that they did not trust DÃÂaz to fulfill any compromise once she did get elected.
New investiture votes were initially postponed until after the 24 May Spanish regional and local elections as a result of the electoral campaign centering the political focus. However, on 5 June, on the impossibility to have DÃÂaz formally invested, the PSOE threatened the opposition parties with letting the legal time limit for the automatic dissolution of the parliament to expire should an agreement not be reached with anyone before Tuesday, 9 June. In the end, the PSOE and C's reached an agreement, with the latter accepting to support DÃÂaz to end the parliamentary deadlock and prevent a new election, lifting off their requirement for Chaves and Griñan's resignations before considering to enter negotiations with the PSOE.
Opinion poll sources
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