November 2019 Spanish general election

November 2019 Spanish general election
← 2019 (Apr) 10 November 2019 2023 →
All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies and 208 (of 265) seats in the Senate
176 seats needed for a majority in the Congress of Deputies
Opinion polls
Registered37,001,379 Green arrow up0.3%
Turnout24,507,715 (66.2%)
Red arrow down5.5 pp
  First party Second party Third party
 
Leader Pedro Sánchez Pablo Casado Santiago Abascal
Party PSOE PP Vox
Leader since 18 June 2017 21 July 2018 20 September 2014
Leader's seat Madrid Madrid Madrid
Last election 123 seats, 28.7% 66 seats, 16.7% 24 seats, 10.3%
Seats won 120 89 52
Seat change Red arrow down3 Green arrow up23 Green arrow up28
Popular vote 6,792,199 5,047,040 3,656,979
Percentage 28.0% 20.8% 15.1%
Swing Red arrow down0.7 pp Green arrow up4.1 pp Green arrow up4.8 pp
  Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party
 
Leader Pablo Iglesias Gabriel Rufián Albert Rivera
Party Unidas Podemos[a] ERC–Sobiranistes Cs
Leader since 15 November 2014 14 October 2019 9 July 2006
Leader's seat Madrid Barcelona Madrid
Last election 42 seats, 14.3% 15 seats, 3.9% 57 seats, 15.9%
Seats won 35 13 10
Seat change Red arrow down7 Red arrow down2 Red arrow down47
Popular vote 3,119,364 880,734 1,650,318
Percentage 12.9% 3.6% 6.8%
Swing Red arrow down1.4 pp Red arrow down0.3 pp Red arrow down9.1 pp
Map of Spain showcasing seat distribution by Congress of Deputies constituency
Map of Spain showcasing winning party's strength by constituency
Map of Spain showcasing winning party's strength by autonomous community
Prime Minister before election

Pedro Sánchez (acting)
PSOE

Prime Minister after election

Pedro Sánchez
PSOE

The November 2019 Spanish general election was held on Sunday, 10 November 2019, to elect the 14th Cortes Generales of the Kingdom of Spain. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 265 seats in the Senate.

The election was held as provided under article 99.5 of the Spanish Constitution,[1] as a result of the failure in government formation negotiations between the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Unidas Podemos following Pedro Sánchez's failed investiture voting on 23–25 July 2019. On 17 September 2019, King Felipe VI declined to propose any candidate for investiture ahead of the 23 September deadline as a result of the lack of agreement between parties, with a new general election scheduled for 10 November.[2][3][4][5] The failure in negotiations prompted Podemos founder Íñigo Errejón to turn his regional Más Madrid platform—which had obtained a remarkable result in the 26 May Madrilenian regional election—into a national alliance under the newly created brand of Más País,[6][7] comprising a number of regional parties and former Podemos and United Left (IU) allies, such as Coalició Compromís, Equo or Chunta Aragonesista (CHA), while also seeing an exodus of a number of Podemos officials into Errejón's new party.[8][9]

Voter turnout was the lowest since the transition to democracy in 1975, with just 66.2% of the electorate casting a ballot, which was lower than the previous negative record set in the 2016 election (66.5%), the only other occasion in Spanish democracy that an election was triggered as a result of the failure of a government formation process. The election saw a partial recovery for the People's Party (PP) and large gains for the far-right Vox party at the expense of Citizens (Cs), which suffered one of the largest electoral setbacks in the history of Spanish elections following the party scoring its best historical result in the April 2019 general election, signalling the end of Albert Rivera's active political career.[10] Both PSOE and Unidas Podemos saw slight decreases in both popular vote and seats, but were still able to outperform the combined strength of PP, Vox and Cs; consequently, both parties agreed to set aside their political feuds and successfully negotiated a government shortly after the election, to become the first governing coalition in Spain since the Second Spanish Republic.[11][12][13]

The tenure of the newly formed government, which was formally appointed on 13 January 2020, would be quickly overshadowed by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March and its political and economical consequences, including the worst worldwide recession since the Great Depression resulting from the massive lockdowns enforced to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2.


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  1. ^ Constitución Española (Constitution) (in Spanish). 29 December 1978. Retrieved 27 December 2016.
  2. ^ "La falta de acuerdo entre los partidos obliga a otras elecciones". El País (in Spanish). 17 September 2019. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  3. ^ "El Rey constata la falta de apoyos a Sánchez que aboca a elecciones el 10 de noviembre". El Confidencial (in Spanish). 17 September 2019. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  4. ^ "El rey constata el desacuerdo político, no propone candidato y España se aboca a elecciones". eldiario.es (in Spanish). 17 September 2019. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  5. ^ "Country to hold 10 November election after talks to break deadlock fail". The Guardian. 17 September 2019. Retrieved 17 September 2019.
  6. ^ "Errejón formaliza su candidatura al 10-N aclamado por la militancia de Más País". La Vanguardia (in Spanish). 27 September 2019. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  7. ^ "El plan de Errejón para que Más País consiga grupo propio en el Congreso". eldiario.es (in Spanish). 26 September 2019. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  8. ^ "Los dos diputados autonómicos de Podemos en Murcia se pasan al partido de Errejón". El País (in Spanish). 27 September 2019. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  9. ^ "Primera ruptura en Unidas Podemos: Equo decide aliarse con Más País de Íñigo Errejón". El Mundo (in Spanish). 27 September 2019. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
  10. ^ "Ciudadanos pierde 47 escaños tras el 10-N y sufre el quinto mayor batacazo electoral de la historia de la democracia: estos son los otros cuatro". Business Insider (in Spanish). 11 November 2019. Retrieved 15 January 2020.
  11. ^ "El primer Gobierno de coalición que marcaría un nuevo hito en la historia de España" (in Spanish). RTVE. 12 November 2019. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  12. ^ "Pedro Sánchez se rodea de perfiles técnicos frente al peso político de Unidas Podemos". eldiario.es (in Spanish). 10 January 2020. Retrieved 11 January 2020.
  13. ^ Rodon, Toni (2020). "The Spanish electoral cycle of 2019: a tale of two countries". West European Politics. 43 (7): 1490–1512. doi:10.1080/01402382.2020.1761689. ISSN 0140-2382. S2CID 219424822.