General election in the Community of Madrid 2019
The 2019 regional elections in the Community of Madrid will take place on Sunday 26 May 2019 to elect the 11th Asamblea de Madrid . All 132 seats in the assembly are available for election. The elections will take place at the same time as the regional elections in at least seven other autonomous communities and local elections across Spain, as well as the 2019 European Parliament elections .
Electoral system
The Madrid Assembly was the dedicated, unicameral legislature of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, with legislative power in regional matters within the meaning of the Spanish Constitution and the Madrilean Statute of Autonomy, as well as the ability to trust or withdraw a president of the Community. In addition, Madrilenians abroad must request a vote before being allowed to vote, a system known as "begging"; or expat voting is known (Spanish: Voto rogado). All members of the Madrid Assembly are elected according to the D'Hondt method and a closed list ratio, whereby the threshold of 5 percent of the valid votes - including the empty votes - is applied regionally. Parties that do not reach the threshold are not taken into account in the allocation of seats. The assembly is entitled to one member for every 50,000 inhabitants or a fraction of more than 25,000 inhabitants. The electoral law provides that parties, associations, coalitions and groups of voters can submit lists of candidates. The associations of voters are, however, obliged to secure the signature of at least 0.5 percent of the voters registered in the Community of Madrid. Voters are prohibited from signing for more than one list of candidates. At the same time, parties and associations that intend to form a coalition in order to jointly participate in an election are obliged to inform the responsible electoral commission within ten days after the election is called.
Election date
The Madrid Assembly's term of office expires four years after the date of its last election. The assembly elections are held every four years on the fourth Sunday of May. The last election took place on May 24, 2015, with the election date for the assembly set on Sunday, May 26, 2019. The President of the Community had the prerogative of dissolving the Madrid Assembly and calling a quick election, provided that no motion of censure was tabled, that no national elections were due and that certain timing conditions were met: namely, that the dissolution neither during the first legislative period nor within the last year the legislature took place before its planned expiry within a year since an earlier dissolution. Should an investiture process fail to elect a regional president within two months of the first ballot, the meeting should automatically be dissolved and a new election held. Any quick election carried out due to these circumstances would not change the period until the next ordinary election, since the elected MPs only serve the remaining part of their four-year term.
After the election
On August 14, 2019, the top candidate of the PP Isabel Díaz Ayuso was elected Regional President of the Madrid Region with the votes of PP, Ciudadanos and Vox. She heads a coalition government made up of PP and Ciudadanos, which is tolerated by Vox.