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Abstract
The 2011 general election in Spain had unprecedented results. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) got its worst electoral results ever in general elections and the Popular Party (PP) won and obtained its second absolute majority since the establishment of democracy. We sustain that the defeat of PSOE can be considered a more defining feature of the elections than the victory of PP. Minority parties increased their electoral support and three new parties entered Congress. This article analyses the political and economic context that led to these changes with respect to the previous elections of 2008.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the editors and one anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments and suggestions. The Spanish National Plan of Research and the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education have funded part of this research through the research project ‘The Dilemmas of Democracy: Representation and Assigning Responsibilities’ (CSO2009-10012) and the scholarship programme José Castillejo.
Notes
[1] Previous absolute majority governments were formed in 1982, 1986 and 1989 by PSOE and in 2000 by PP. In the case of the remaining six elections, single-party governments were formed with support from regional parties.
[2] Pedro Sobles was minister of economy in Felipe González's governments (1993–96) and in José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's governments (2004–09). Manuel Pizarro is a businessman and he was ‘signed’ by PP in the 2008 elections.
[3] Since 2008 Spain has had the highest level of unemployment in the EU, starting with 11 per cent in 2008 and reaching 22 per cent in 2012. EU averages were seven per cent and almost ten per cent, respectively (Eurostat).
[4] CIS, survey no. 2847 (October 2010).
[5] In 2008, public debt in Spain was 40 per cent of GDP, whereas in Germany it was 67, in France 68 and in the United Kingdom (UK) 55 per cent (Eurostat).
[6] According to the Minister of Labour, 24 per cent took part in the strike in public enterprises and 7.5 per cent in the civil service. According to an estimate by the Think Tank ‘Economistas frente a la crisis’ the demand for electricity fell by 91 per cent compared with a normal day. http://www.economistasfrentealacrisis.com/
[7] CIS surveys measure ideology on a ten-point scale. We consider the most leftist citizens those who place themselves in points one and two, and moderate leftists, those who choose positions three and four.
[8] The coalition government was formed by the Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (Catalan Socialists' Party, PSC), the pro-independence nationalist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia, ERC) and the eco-socialist Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds–Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (Initiative for Catalonia-Greens-United and Alternative Left, ICV).
[9] Local elections were held in all municipalities of Spain. The regional elections affected all autonomous communities except for Andalucia, the Basque Country, Catalonia and Galicia, which hold elections on different dates.
[10] It was suggested in the press that the date for the elections was not chosen by chance. It coincided with the anniversary of Franco's death and many saw it as an appeal to leftist voters who had previously voted for PSOE. Other interpretations focus on technical reasons. Basically, the date chosen allowed the government not to present the 2012 budget before the dissolution of parliament. However, this would also have been the case if the elections had been set for 13 November.
[11] During the term 2004–08, he opted to open discussions with the terrorist group, only to be betrayed by ETA during the truce when a bomb exploded in the Madrid airport in January 2007. This failed attempt had a political cost for PSOE in the 2008 elections.
[12] He became very well known after leading an initiative during the Copenhagen Summit of the UN on Climate Change to protest against the lack of will of the world leaders to reach an agreement. The peaceful protest consisted of sneaking into the Danish royal palace, to a reception offered by the Queen, with a poster. López de Uralde and other activists ended up in jail in the Danish capital, where they stayed for 19 days.
[13] The Spanish electoral system belongs to the proportional family, but it has a pluralist bias by which the two most voted parties in each electoral district are over-represented, while the smaller ones are under-represented. The small parties with electoral support distributed all over the country get less seats in parliament than their proportion of votes; however, the regional parties—which, by definition, concentrate their votes in a certain region and which are the most voted-for in their constituencies—are treated by the system like big parties.
[14] These are Eusko Alkartasuna, Alternatiba, Aralar and some independents.
[15] The other one being Sortu, another political formation created in February 2011. Sortu was declared legal by the Constitutional Court in June 2012, more than one year after Bildu.
[16] Since 2009 politicians and corruption have increasingly been perceived by citizens as significant problems in Spain. According to CIS, in the summer of 2008 around six per cent of citizens thought that party officials were ‘a serious problem’ in Spain. In June 2011, a quarter of those interviewed shared the same opinion. The percentage of citizens who thought that corruption was one of the main problems in Spain went from 1.4 per cent in September 2009 to 12.3 per cent in January 2012.
[17] These results are confirmed by the post-electoral survey carried out by CIS but they are not shown for reasons of space.
[18] During the first days of the movement, the discussions about which kind of vote would best express the demands of the movement pointed to the small parties (without indicating any in particular) and to a blank vote. By October–November, though, there was an intense discussion in both social networks and the assemblies on whether a blank vote benefited the main parties or not. This cast doubts on the effects of a blank vote, influencing a preference of many in the movement in favour of an invalid vote.
[19] This was the second reform of a very rigid Constitution. The only other reform of the 1978 Spanish Constitution took place in 1992 and it was motivated by the signature of the Maastricht Treaty.
[20] See the new article no. 135 of the Spanish Constitution.
[21] Several senior PP politicians were involved: Luis Bárcenas, the PP treasurer, Francisco Camps, the President of Valencia, and regional deputies of Madrid were accused of receiving money and gifts from the Gürtel network.
