Madrid City Council election, 2015

Madrid City Council election, 2015
Madrid
24 May 2015

All 57 seats in the Madrid City Council
29 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered 2,386,104 Increase3.4%
Turnout 1,642,898 (68.9%)
Increase1.7 pp
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Esperanza Aguirre Manuela Carmena Antonio Miguel Carmona
Party PP Ahora Madrid PSM-PSOE
Leader since 6 March 2015 30 March 2015 6 October 2014
Last election 31 seats, 49.7% Did not contest 15 seats, 23.9%
Seats won 21 20 9
Seat change Decrease10 Increase20 Decrease6
Popular vote 563,292 519,210 249,152
Percentage 34.6% 31.8% 15.3%
Swing Decrease15.1 pp New party Decrease8.6 pp

  Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party
 
Leader Begoña Villacís David Ortega Raquel López
Party C's UPyD IU
Leader since 2 March 2015 9 October 2010 26 March 2015
Last election 0 seats, 0.2% 5 seats, 7.9% 6 seats, 10.7%
Seats won 7 0 0
Seat change Increase7 Decrease5 Decrease6
Popular vote 186,059 29,823 27,869
Percentage 11.4% 1.8% 1.7%
Swing Increase11.2 pp Decrease6.1 pp Decrease9.0 pp

Mayor before election

Ana Botella
PP

Elected Mayor

Manuela Carmena
Ahora Madrid

The 2015 Madrid City Council election was held on Sunday, 24 May 2015, to elect the 10th Madrid City Council, the unicameral local legislature of the municipality of Madrid. At stake were all 57 seats in the City Council, determining the Mayor of Madrid.

Standing for the People's Party (PP) was Esperanza Aguirre, former President of Madrid (2003–2012), President of the Spanish Senate (1999–2002) and Minister of Education and Culture (1996–1999), as well as the leader of the PP Madrilenian regional branch since 2004. Aguirre became her party's candidate in March 2015 after a 6-month interlude without a Mayoral candidate, starting in September 2014 when incumbent Mayor Ana Botella declined to stand for re-election. The election would result in the first city's female Mayor being elected after contesting an election as candidate. Ana Botella, the city's first-ever female mayor, had not been the PP candidate for the 2011 election, and had only been elected to the office after Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón's resignation on December 2011.

The election was an unexpectedly close race between Aguirre's PP and former judge Manuela Carmena's Podemos-supported Ahora Madrid platform, obtaining 21 and 20 council seats each. This was a blow to Esperanza Aguirre's expectations of becoming the city's Mayor, as an alliance between Ahora Madrid and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), which itself suffered from tactical voting to Ahora Madrid and plummeted to 9 council seats, allowed Carmena to become the first non-PP mayor in 24 years.

In an attempt to counter the likely alliance between Ahora Madrid and the PSOE, Aguirre proposed a broad "anti-Podemos" coalition between the PP, PSOE and C's headed by either of these parties' candidates, arguing that such an agreement represented 62% of voters backing one of these so-called "centrist" parties.[1] PSOE candidate Antonio Miguel Carmona, however, quickly spoke against such a proposal, saying that he would not accept the PP votes in order to become mayor.

Electoral system

The number of seats in the Madrid City Council was determined by the population count. According to the municipal electoral law, the population-seat relationship on each municipality was to be established on the following scale:

Inhabitants Seats
<100 3
101–250 5
251–1,000 7
1,001–2,000 9
2,001–5,000 11
5,001–10,000 13
10,001–20,000 17
20,001–50,000 21
50,001–100,000 25

Additionally, for populations greater than 100,000, 1 seat was to be added per each 100,000 inhabitants or fraction, according to the most updated census data, and adding 1 more seat if the resulting seat count gives an even number. As the updated population census for the 2015 election was around 3,200,000, the Madrid City Council size was set to 57 seats.

All City Council members were elected in a single multi-member district, consisting of the Madrid municipality, using the D'Hondt method and a closed-list proportional representation system. Voting was on the basis of universal suffrage in a secret ballot. Only lists polling above 5% of valid votes in all of the municipality (which include blank ballotsfor none of the above) were entitled to enter the seat distribution.

The Spanish municipal electoral law established a clause stating that, if no candidate was to gather an absolute majority of votes to be elected as mayor of a municipality, the candidate of the most-voted party would be automatically elected to the post.[2]

Mayoral Candidates

According to the Spanish legislation on local authorities, the government of cities is assigned to the City Council and the mayor. The Spanish political system is parliamentary democracy in all its levels of government, with the city council responsible for the election of the mayor.

People's Party

The Mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, announced her intention not to run for mayor in September 2014.[3]

Mariano Rajoy, the President of the PP, designated Esperanza Aguirre as candidate on 6 March 2015.[4]

Spanish Socialist Workers' Party

The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party scheduled a primary election on October 2014. Regional assemblyman and frequent talk show guest Antonio Miguel Carmona and city councillor Enrique del Olmo announced their intention to run for the post. Candidates intending to run had to secure the endorsement of at least 20% of the party membership.

On the closing day of the endorsement collection only Carmona had gathered the required endorsements, thus being nominated as party candidate without the primary election being held.[5]

United Left

United left of Madrid held an open primary election on 30 November 2014. The election was contested by:

Valiente defeated his rivals by securing 59% of the votes. However, he withdrew his candidacy after internal turmoil in the regional branch of the party and entered the Ahora Madrid election list, led by Manuela Carmena. Raquel López was designated as the new IU candidate for the local election instead.[6]

Union Progress and Democracy

The party's current spokesperson on the City Council, David Ortega, obtained a landslide victory (81% of the votes) against three largely unknown candidates.

Background

Electoral campaign

Electoral debates were held in Telemadrid between the candidates of the PP, PSOE, IU, UPyD, Vox, Citizens and Ahora Madrid in the last week of campaign, between 18 and 20 May. The most expected and tense moment came with the debate between PP candidate Esperanza Aguirre and AM Manuela Carmena, as the most-likely candidates to become the next Mayor of the city. Aguirre immediately accused Carmena of saying in the past that "ETA members had suffered a lot", trying to link the former judge with the terrorist group, as well as trying to dicredit Carmena's career in the judiciary, which was seen as a furious attack of Aguirre on Carmena. The latter, visibly surprised, counterattacked responding that Aguirre was acting arrogantly and contemptuous to others and accusing her of allowing corruption to spread during her tenure as President of Madrid. "Please go, you've caused a lot of harm" said Carmena to Aguirre.[7]

In the last days of the campaign, especially following her debate with Aguirre, several celebrities such as actors Pilar Bardem, Carlos Bardem, Loles León, Goya Toledo, Paco León, playwright Cristina Rota, lawyer and former politician Cristina Almeida and journalist Ernesto Ekaizer expressed their support for Carmena's candidacy, with actress Eva Hache going on to say through the Twitter social network that "I don't know if we are Manuela but surely we are not the other [in reference to Aguirre]. VOTE."[8][9] Carmena had also received the support of dozens of artists who created drawings in support of Carmena's and Ahora Madrid candidacy, with the drawings themselves becoming viral in the social networks.[10] Following the Telemadrid debate, after which Aguirre was highly criticised for her aggressive behaviour towards Carmena,[11] supporters cast the drawings next to Aguirre's home in Malasaña.[12] On 21 May, a Carmena's act in the center of Madrid exceeded its capacity, originally scheduled for 800 people, resulting in the closing of a street and in Carmena herself apologizing to the around 1,500 people outside that were not able to enter.[13]

Opinion polls

Vote

Poll results are listed in the table below in reverse chronological order, showing the most recent first. The highest percentage figure in each polling survey is displayed in bold, and the background shaded in the leading party's colour. In the instance that there is a tie, then no figure is shaded. The lead column on the right shows the percentage-point difference between the two parties with the highest figures. Poll results use the date the survey's fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication. However, if such date is unknown, the date of publication will be given instead.

Seat projections

Opinion polls showing seat projections are displayed in the table below. The highest seat figures in each polling survey have their background shaded in the leading party's colour. In the instance that there is a tie, then no figure is shaded. 29 seats were required for an absolute majority in the Madrid City Council.

Results

Summary of the 24 May 2015 Madrid City Council election results
Party Vote Seats
Votes % ±pp Won +/−
People's Party (PP) 563,292 34.55 Decrease15.14 21 Decrease10
Now Madrid (Ahora Madrid) 519,210 31.85 New 20 Increase20
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) 249,152 15.28 Decrease8.65 9 Decrease6
Citizens-Party of the Citizenry (C's) 186,059 11.41 Increase11.22 7 Increase7
Union, Progress and Democracy (UPyD) 29,823 1.83 Decrease6.02 0 Decrease5
United Left-The Greens (IU-LV) 27,869 1.71 Decrease9.04 0 Decrease6
Vox (VOX) 9,843 0.60 New 0 ±0
Animalist Party Against Mistreatment of Animals (PACMA) 9,601 0.59 Increase0.13 0 ±0
The Greens-Green Group (LV-GV) 5,419 0.33 New 0 ±0
United Free Citizens (CILUS) 2,520 0.15 New 0 ±0
Spanish Falange of the JONS (FE-JONS) 2,082 0.13 ±0.00 0 ±0
Blank Seats (Eb) 1,891 0.12 New 0 ±0
Blank ballots 15,814 0.97 Decrease1.87
Total 1,630,350 100.00 57 ±0
Valid votes 1,630,350 99.24 Increase1.06
Invalid votes 12,548 0.76 Decrease1.06
Votes cast / turnout 1,642,898 68.85 Increase1.63
Abstentions 743,206 31.15 Decrease1.63
Registered voters 2,386,104
Source: Ministry of the Interior
Vote share
PP
 
34.55%
AM
 
31.85%
PSOE
 
15.28%
C's
 
11.41%
UPyD
 
1.83%
IU-LV
 
1.71%
Others
 
2.40%
Blank ballots
 
0.97%
City council seats
PP
 
36.84%
AM
 
35.09%
PSOE
 
15.79%
C's
 
12.28%

Notes

  1. This poll provides data ranges and/or approximations. In order to simplify, the average of these data is given.

References

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