2011 Asturian regional election

2011 Asturian regional election

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All 45 seats in the General Junta of the Principality of Asturias 23 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	987,305 0.6%
Turnout	609,072 (61.7%) 0.1 pp
First party Second party Third party   Leader Francisco Álvarez Cascos Javier Fernández Isabel Pérez-Espinosa Party FAC PSOE PP Leader since 18 January 2011 23 October 2010 29 December 2010 Leader's seat Central Central Central Last election Did not contest 21 seats, 42.0% 20 seats, 41.5% Seats won 16 15 10 Seat change 16 6 10 Popular vote 178,031 179,619 119,767 Percentage 29.7% 29.9% 20.0% Swing New party 12.1 pp 21.5 pp   Fourth party   Leader Jesús Iglesias Party IU–LV Leader since 2007 Leader's seat Central Last election 4 seats, 9.7% Seats won 4 Seat change 0 Popular vote 61,703 Percentage 10.3% Swing 0.6%
Constituency results map for the General Junta of the Principality of Asturias
President before election Vicente Álvarez Areces PSOE Elected President Francisco Álvarez Cascos FAC

The 2011 Asturian regional election was held on Sunday, 22 May 2011, to elect the 8th General Junta of the Principality of Asturias. All 45 seats in the General Junta were up for election. The election was held simultaneously with regional elections in twelve other autonomous communities and local elections all throughout Spain.

Except for the 1995-1999 legislature, the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) had governed the autonomous community since the first election in 1983. However, in the 2011 election, the Asturias Forum (FAC), a split from the People's Party (PP), won the most seats despite PSOE obtaining more votes. The FAC was established on 19 January 2011 by Francisco Álvarez Cascos, former Deputy Prime Minister of Spain, after failing to be selected as PP's candidate. FAC gains came at the expense of the PP and the PSOE, but while PSOE's collapse had been predicted in early opinion polls, the PP had been widely expected to make strong gains before Cascos' split, instead scoring the worst result of its history. The Asturian Bloc (BA) had terminated its coalition with United Left (IU) and the Asturian Greens (LVA) in August 2010 and run separately, failing to win any seats. IU and the Greens maintained their coalition and retained their existing four seats.

Vicente Álvarez Areces, incumbent since 1999, did not seek re-election. As in Asturias it is not allowed for parties to vote against a proposed presidential candidate (instead being forced to either abstain or vote a candidate of their own), in July 2011, the PSOE and PP announced that they would abstain in the investiture voting of Álvarez Cascos, who thus became the new president at the head of a minority administration.^[1]

The resulting government, however, was not able to gather legislative support to approve its 2012 regional budget, with both PP and PSOE blocking the vote, resulting in a fresh election being held in March 2012.