Spanish general election, 2004
The Spanish General Election 2004 took place on 14 March 2004. The turnout for the elections to Congress was 77.21 %, which was higher by more than eight percentage points over four years earlier ( 68.71 %). The turnout for the elections to the Senate rose.
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( Partido Socialista Obrero Español) won with its leading candidate José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, surprisingly, the elections to the Spanish Congress of Deputies (sp.: Congreso de los Deputies ) in Spain in 2004. The PSOE was in this chamber of parliament to 42.64 percent, while the previously ruling by absolute majority People's Party PP ( Partido Popular) clearly slipped under her top candidate Mariano Rajoy to 37.64 percent. Zapatero was to give the voters the mandate to form a new government (Cabinet Zapatero ). Another loser in the election, the United Left ( Izquierda Unida, left coalition movement, including the Spanish Communists ), which lost four of its previously 9 seats in the House of Representatives, as well as the Catalan bourgeois party alliance Convergència i Unio apply (10 instead of 15 seats in parliament ). Emerging from the elections showed the left-wing Catalan regional party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, which had been heavily criticized before the elections because of the contacts of their top politician Josep Lluís Carod Rovira for ETA.
Even with the simultaneous elections to the Senate ( Senado ) of the PP clearly lost votes. However, the PP in this chamber with 102 (2000: 127) deputies continue the majority before the Socialists with 81 Senators (2000: 53).
Backgrounds of the election results to the Spanish Parliament
The parliamentary elections were under the impression the Madrid cable stops on 11 March 2004. Been to the ruling PP is alleged to have acted unilaterally and opaque during the investigation of the authorship of the terrorists. Due to the rapid determination of the separatist group ETA as the author of the terrorist attacks in the capital, the PP has want to distract from the meantime probable perpetrators of Islamist terrorists in the eyes of many critics. Of these, the Socialists, who perceived by many as a good and brittle Rodríguez Zapatero could, according to election observers benefit to a great extent (see, among others, El País, El Mundo, mirror )
Outcome Tables
Election to Congress
- Number of votes cast: 25,846,620
- Turnout: 77.21 % (2000: 68.71 %)
- Non-voters: 7,628,756
- Abstention rate: 22.79 % (2000: 31.29 %)
- Invalid votes: 261 590
- Proportion of invalid votes cast at the: 1.01% (2000: 0.68 %)
- Number of valid votes cast: 25,585,030
- Number of Votes blank voting: 406 789
- Proportion of blank voting: 1.57% (2000: 1.57% )
° Including blank discharged ballot.
Election to the Senate
- Number of votes cast: 25,841,904
- Turnout: 77.21 % (2000: 68.83 %)
- Non-voters: 7,626,227
- Abstention rate: 22.79 % (2000: 31.17 %)
- Invalid votes: 753 073
- Proportion of invalid votes cast at the: 2.91% (2000: 2.49% )
- Number of valid votes cast: 25,088,831
- Number of Votes blank voting: 676 701
- Proportion of blank voting: 2.62 % (2000: 2.75% )
The Senate is composed of directly elected by the people, members and other senators of the parliaments of the individual regions (Spanish: Comunidades Autónomas) are determined together. The direct election is held simultaneously with the elections of the deputies of the Legislative. The number of indirectly elected senators depends on the population of each region (one plus another per 1 million inhabitants).
In the eighth legislature (from 2004), the Senate consisted of 259 members: 208 directly elected and 51 are sent by the regional legislatures.
The direct election takes place in constituencies that are consistent with the provinces (except for the Balearic and Canary Islands, where constituency the individual islands ). In the provincial constituencies respectively - regardless of the population - elected four senators, each voter votes awarded three people and each party may nominate three candidates. The trailer of one party will rule in its votes to three candidates, " his" party. This usually means that the three candidates of the strongest party in the province received more votes than the best-placed candidate of the second largest party. In the vast majority of cases, therefore, will provide one for the province's largest party three senators and the second largest party. In the 2004 elections was the case in all provinces except for two (Toledo and Teruel, where PSOE and PP presented two senators ). Consequently, there is a form of majority voting.
The composition of the delegates of the regional parliaments senators may change during the legislative change ( if during the term of new regional parliaments are elected ), so only the composition of the Senate is played at the beginning of the legislature in March 2004 in the following:
( 1) coalition of PSC (Catalan branch of the PSOE), ERC and IC - V (Catalan branch of the IU )
Comparative Congress / Senate
The fact that the PSOE in the Congreso and the PP in the Senate, the majority, is not in a different choice behavior justified, but in the electoral system. For the Senate four mandates are awarded in each province, whether it is the smallest, Soria, with 94,000 inhabitants, or the largest, Madrid, with 6.1 million There is much more rural and therefore conservative dominated provinces, what the PP favors. So the 102 directly elected senators of the PP together received 19.5 million people voices. PSOE and Entesa Catalana de Progrés put together only 93 senators, but this required 21.5 million people voices, with 2 million more.