https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1418-7833
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Abstract
The 2023 Spanish general election was a snap election called unexpectedly by the PM Pedro Sánchez the day after the local and regional elections in May 2023. Turnout was higher than expected (66.6%) and the result confirmed the high degree of multi-dimensional polarisation in Spanish society. Right-wing parties improved their position: the mainstream conservative PP increased its support mainly at the expense of Ciudadanos and the far-right VOX. Yet, parties on the left, especially the incumbent PSOE, performed better than predicted by polls and, together with the seats won by regional parties, were able to keep a dominant position in Congress. A left-wing minority coalition cabinet was ultimately formed with two parties in government (PSOE and Sumar) and the parliamentary support of several regional parties. Parliamentary support was reached after an agreement that includes decentralisation measures and an amnesty to repair the judiciary consequences of the 2017 independence referendum in Catalonia, which showcases the multilevel and multidimensional complexity of Spanish politics.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Other recent reports in the Elections in Context series include Kosiara-Pedersen (Citation2023), Durovic (Citation2023), Garzia (Citation2023) and Arter (Citation2024).
2 Amat et al. (Citation2020) found there was an increase in technocratic attitudes and an increased willingness to trade individual freedom for security and personal protection.
3 Ideological and affective polarisation was not only discussed in academic settings but it also piqued an interest among the population, and social scientists published popular science books around the topic (Miller Citation2023; Torcal Citation2023).
4 In Madrid, anti-Covid measures were kept to the minimum, at the expense of mortality rates (Konstantinoudis et al. Citation2022), as freedom was prioritised to support small businesses, especially those in the service sector.
5 Regional elections took place in 12 regions (out of 17): Aragón, Asturias, Canarias, Cantabria, Castilla-La Mancha, Comunitat Valenciana, Extremadura, Balearic Islands, Comunidad de Madrid, Murcia, Navarra, la Rioja.
6 The number of mail votes was the largest in Spanish democratic history and around 7% of voters voted by mail (see and A.3 in the online appendix).
7 Results at the upper chamber looked very different due to a majoritarian electoral system that resulted in an absolute majority for the PP.
8 The number of observations for the NSWP is comparatively low. In addition, these parties are mainly competitive in Catalonia and the Basque Country, where the electoral competition follows a different logic compared to the rest of Spain (Rodon Citation2020).
9 We only kept transitions of substantive interest and with enough observations to run the analysis.
10 This picture of the Spanish political competition needs to be complemented with at least two important points. First, despite the PP traditionally being the sole force on the right, the Spanish median voter has been on the centre-left (4.6 on the survey employed on this article). Second, there have been many attempts to create alternative political parties that would occupy the centre to the right of the political spectrum. Before Vox, Cs was able to become a party with representation in the chamber. Yet, before Cs the majority of these attempts were unsuccessful.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Pau Vall-Prat
Pau Vall-Prat is Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science at the Department of Social Sciences and the IC3JM, both at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Universitat de Barcelona and he specialises in comparative politics and historical political economy. His research interests include elite conflicts, democratisation, and electoral behaviour under autocratic systems (www.pauvallprat.com). [[email protected]]
Toni Rodon
Toni Rodon is Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He is also a research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include electoral participation, political geography, comparative politics and historical political economy (www.tonirodon.cat). [[email protected]]