1996 Spanish general election

1996 Spanish general election

← 1993 3 March 1996 2000 →
All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 208 (of 257) seats in the Senate 176 seats needed for a majority in the Congress of Deputies
Opinion polls
Registered	32,531,833 4.8%
Turnout	25,172,058 (77.4%) 1.0 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader José María Aznar Felipe González Julio Anguita Party PP PSOE IU Leader since 4 September 1989 28 September 1979 12 February 1989 Leader's seat Madrid Madrid Madrid Last election 142 seats, 35.4%[a] 159 seats, 38.8% 18 seats, 9.6% Seats won 156 141 21 Seat change 14 18 3 Popular vote 9,716,006 9,425,678 2,639,774 Percentage 38.8% 37.6% 10.5% Swing 3.4 pp 1.2 pp 0.9 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader Joaquim Molins Iñaki Anasagasti José Carlos Mauricio Party CiU EAJ/PNV CC Leader since 1 February 1995 1986 1996 Leader's seat Barcelona Biscay Las Palmas Last election 17 seats, 4.9% 5 seats, 1.2% 4 seats, 0.9% Seats won 16 5 4 Seat change 1 0 0 Popular vote 1,151,633 318,951 220,418 Percentage 4.6% 1.3% 0.9% Swing 0.3 pp 0.1 pp 0.0 pp
Vote winner strength by constituency (Congress) Vote winner strength by autonomous community (Congress) Election results by constituency (Congress)
Prime Minister before election Felipe González PSOE Prime Minister after election José María Aznar PP

A general election was held in Spain on Sunday, 3 March 1996, to elect the members of the 6th Cortes Generales. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 257 seats in the Senate.

Ever since forming a minority government after its victory in the 1993 election, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) had to deal with the impact of the early 1990s recession in the Spanish economy, amid soaring unemployment, an increase in public deficit and GDP contraction. The cabinet of Prime Minister Felipe González was also rocked by the unveiling of a string of corruption scandals, including accusations of funding state terrorism through the GAL, the misuse of public funds to pay for undeclared bonuses to high-ranking officials, tax evasion by former and current cabinet members and illegal espionage by the CESID. A snap election was triggered after Convergence and Union (CiU) withdrew its parliamentary support from to the government in mid 1995 and helped vote down the 1996 General State Budget in October that year.

The election resulted in the first PSOE defeat in a general election since 1979, but predictions of a landslide victory by the opposition José María Aznar's People's Party (PP)—which had achieved resounding wins in the European Parliament, local and regional elections held in 1994 and 1995 and was predicted by opinion polls to secure an outright overall majority or come short of it by few seats—failed to materialize. Instead, the election turned into the closest result between the two major parties in the Spanish democratic period to date; a PSOE comeback, fueled by a strong 77.4% voter turnout (the highest scored ever since) left the PP leading by just 1.2 percentage points and 290,000 votes, falling 20 seats short of an absolute majority. Julio Anguita's United Left (IU)—which had hoped to come close or even surpass the PSOE, in the so-called sorpasso—also failed to meet expectations, despite scoring over 10% in their best overall result in a general election since the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) in 1979.

At 156 seats, this would be the worst performance for a winning party in the democratic period until the 2015 election. The results forced Aznar to tone down his attacks on Catalan and Basque nationalists in order to garner their support for his investiture. After two months of negotiations, agreements were reached with CiU—the Majestic Pact—the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and Canarian Coalition (CC), enabling José María Aznar to become prime minister of a centre-right minority cabinet and marking the end of over 13 years of Socialist government.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).