Spanish general election 2004

The 2004 Spanish parliamentary elections took place on March 14, 2004. The turnout for the Congress elections was 77.21%, which is over eight percentage points higher than four years earlier (68.71%). The turnout for the Senate elections also increased.

Result of the Congress elections

2004 General Election - Congress

The Spanish Socialist Workers Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) surprisingly won the 2004 elections for the Spanish House of Representatives (Sp .: Congreso de los Diputados) in Spain with its top candidate José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero . The PSOE came to 42.64 percent in this parliamentary chamber, while the PP (Partido Popular) , which had previously ruled with an absolute majority, slipped significantly to 37.64 percent under its top candidate Mariano Rajoy . Zapatero received the mandate from the voters to form a new government ( Zapatero cabinet ). Another loser in the election is the United Left ( Izquierda Unida , left-wing rallying movement including the Spanish Communists), which lost 4 of its previous 9 seats in the House of Representatives, and the Catalan bourgeois party alliance Convergència i Unió (10 instead of 15 seats in parliament). The left-wing Catalan regional party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya emerged stronger from the elections, which had been heavily criticized before the elections for the contacts of its top politician Josep Lluís Carod Rovira with the ETA .

2004 General Election - Congress

Result of the Senate elections

Result of parliamentary elections 2004 - Senate

The PP also lost significant votes in the elections to the Senate (Senado) that were held at the same time. However, the PP continues to have the majority in this chamber with 102 (2000: 127) members, ahead of the socialists with 81 senators (2000: 53).

Background to the election results for the Spanish parliament

The parliamentary elections were influenced by the train attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004. The previously ruling PP is accused of having acted unilaterally and opaque in the context of clarifying the authorship of the terrorists . By quickly committing to the underground organization ETA as the originator of the terrorist attacks in the capital, the PP wanted to divert attention in the eyes of many critics from the now likely perpetrators of Islamist terrorists. According to election observers, the socialists, with Rodríguez Zapatero, perceived by many as good and brittle, were able to benefit from this to a decisive extent (see, among others, El País, El Mundo, Spiegel)

Results overviews

Election to Congress

Number of votes cast: 25,846,620
Turnout: 77.21% (2000: 68.71%)
Non-voters: 7,628,756
Abstention from voting: 22.79% (2000: 31.29%)
Invalid votes: 261,590
Proportion of invalid votes in the votes cast: 1.01% (2000: 0.68%)
Number of valid votes cast: 25,585,030
Blank votes cast: 406,789
Share of blank votes: 1.57% (2000: 1.57%)

← Spanish Parliamentary Elections (Congress) 2004 →
Political party	be right	%	Seats
Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE)	10,909,687	42.64	164
Partido Popular (PP)	9,630,512	37.64	148
Convergència i Unió (CiU)	829.046	3.24	10
Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC)	649,999	2.54	8th
Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ / PNV)	417.154	1.63	7th
Izquierda Unida (IU)	1,269,532	4.96	5
Coalición Canaria (CC)	221.034	0.86	3
Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG)	205,613	0.80	2
Chunta Aragonesista (CHA)	93,865	0.37	1
Eusko Alkartasuna (EA)	80,613	0.32	1
Nafarroa Bai (Na-Bai)	60,645	0.24	1
Other	1,217,330	4.76 °	0
Total	25,585,030	100.00%	350

° Including blank voting papers.

Election to the Senate

2004 General Election - Senate

Number of votes cast: 25,841,904
Turnout: 77.21% (2000: 68.83%)
Non-voters: 7,626,227
Abstention from voting: 22.79% (2000: 31.17%)
Invalid votes: 753,073
Proportion of invalid votes in votes cast: 2.91% (2000: 2.49%)
Number of valid votes cast: 25,088,831
Blank votes cast: 676,701
Share of blank votes: 2.62% (2000: 2.75%)

The Senate is made up of members directly elected by the people and other senators who are determined by the parliaments of the individual regions (Spanish: Comunidades Autónomas). The direct election takes place at the same time as the elections for the members of the Congress. The number of indirectly elected senators depends on the population of the respective region (one plus another for every 1 million inhabitants).

In the 8th legislature (from 2004) the Senate consisted of 259 members: 208 directly elected and 51 delegated by the regional parliaments.

Direct elections take place in constituencies that correspond to the provinces (except for the Balearic and Canary Islands, where constituencies are the individual islands). In each of the provincial constituencies - regardless of the size of the population - four senators are elected, with each voter giving three votes and each party nominating three candidates. The supporter of a party will usually give his votes to the three candidates of "his" party. This usually results in the three candidates in the strongest party in the province getting more votes than the top-ranked candidate in the second strongest party. In the vast majority of cases, therefore, the strongest party will provide three senators and the second strongest party one for the province. In the 2004 elections, this was the case in all but two of the provinces (Toledo and Teruel, where the PSOE and PP each had two senators). There is therefore a form of majority voting.

The composition of the senators sent by the regional parliaments can change during the legislature (if new regional parliaments are elected during the legislative period), therefore only the composition of the senate at the beginning of the legislature in March 2004 is given below:

← Composition of the Senate, March 2004 →
fraction	Senators total	Political party	Senators direct election	Political party	Senators indirectly
Partido Popular (PP)	126		102		24
Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE)	96		81		15th
Entesa Catalana de Progrés (1)	16		12		4th
Partido Nacionalista Vasco (EAJ-PNV)	7th		6th		1
Convergència i Unió (CiU)	6th		4th		2
Coalición Canaria (CC)	4th		3		1
Collective group (Grupo Mixto)	4th			IU	2
				BNG	1
				PAR	1

(1) Electoral alliance made up of PSC (Catalan offshoot of PSOE ), ERC and IC-V (Catalan offshoot of IU )

Comparison between Congress and Senate

The fact that the PSOE has a majority in the Congreso and the PP in the Senate is not due to different voting behavior, but rather to the electoral system. Four mandates are awarded for the Senate in each province, be it the smallest, Soria, with 94,000 inhabitants, or the largest, Madrid, with 6.1 million. There are many more rural and thus conservative provinces, which favors the PP . The 102 directly elected senators of the PP received a total of 19.5 million votes. PSOE and Entesa Catalana de Progrés together had only 93 senators, but required 21.5 million votes, that is 2 million more.

Government formation

Rodríguez Zapatero was elected Prime Minister by the House of Representatives on April 16, 2004 in the first ballot.

Election of the Prime Minister VIII. Legislature
candidate	date													Result
José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero	April 16, 2004 necessary: absolute majority (176/350)	Yes	164		5		8th		3	2	1			183/350
		No		148										148/350
		abstention				10		7th				1	1	19/350

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