Talk:2011 Spanish general election

Electoral procedures

These must then be marked by voters, either in the polling station or outside the polling station and placed inside sealed envelopes which are then placed inside ballot boxes in the polling station.

This is only correct for senate-election, not for congress.

Congress election: There are seperate ballots of each party. They contain the name of party, its symbol and the list of candidates. The elector chooses the ballot of the party he wants to vote for and puts it in the envelope. There is no need of marking anything; ballots with alterations in the ballot made by the elector result invalid.

See: [1] and [2] --Marnal (talk) 19:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Third Party

The election box displays United Left as the third party, with two seats. However, Convergence and Union have 10 seats, the Basque Nationalist Party has six and Republican Left of Catalonia have three. United Left are indeed third in terms of over all vote, however total vote is not listed in the election box. How are we defining "third party"? Jordi22 (talk) 14:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Current seats of People's Party

People's Party (PP) has 152 seats today because Navarrase People's Union (Unión del Pueblo Navarro, UPN) broke the coalition with PP in 2008. One of the two UPN deputies changed to PP in the same year, but he was replaced for a UPN deputy in 2011. http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Partidos_pol%C3%ADticos_de_Espa%C3%B1a — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.155.23.242 (talk) 22:11, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

concurrent Andalucia regional election?

Is there, as in the past, also a concurrent election for the regional parliament of Andalucia? Or is the link between both elections (national and Andalucia) broken because the national elections are held earlier (dissolution) than the normal 4-year cycle?--Bancki (talk) 14:45, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Apparently, the link was broken. It seems to have been established in 1996 because the Andalucians had a snap election. -Rrius (talk) 15:19, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you!--Bancki (talk) 08:18, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

apportionment of seats

Apparently, there is also a reapportionment of seats: [3] says 1 Congress seat goes from Cádiz to Madrid; and [4] says 2 extra regional/indirect seats in the Senate (for Castilla-La Mancha and for Comunitat Valenciana)--Bancki (talk) 14:45, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Leaders' seats

Spanish electoral system is not a first past the post system as the british is, but a proportional one. that means that leaders in spanish system do not represent their constituecy, but the whole party they belong to. That's why I reckon it's not necessary to specify the leader's seat for each party in the infobox. Agree?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.250.179.233 (talk) 23:03, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree: why mark the both leaders' "seat" as Madrid, when there are 33 other MPs from Madrid beside them? The "Leader's seat" refers to the single-person-constituency system. --89.27.103.116 (talk) 22:09, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree as well and have removed it. Standard practice in Spain is that the Prime Ministerial candidates for national parties head the Madrid list for their respective parties. Valenciano (talk) 23:09, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Opinion polls

The latest opinion poll referred to in the article is from July. Surely there has been fresh opinion polls as well? --89.27.103.116 (talk) 22:12, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

More parties should be in the infobox

I'm not sure exactly where we draw the line (5 deputies?), but we must show more than just two political parties in the main box up to the top right. At least Convergence and Union (16 deputies) and United Left (11 deputies) must be included.

Precedents of more inclusive election boxes abound, eg:

• Irish general election, 2011
• Slovenian parliamentary election, 2011
• Swedish general election, 2010

--Mais oui! (talk) 05:27, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

So much for an infobox being a summary, eh? The Irish infobox is horrendous! Eight parties, including a party that got 0.4% of the vote? WTF? Australian federal election, 2011 and United Kingdom general election, 2010 are good examples as they're quite similar to Spain, where two parties get at least 2/3 of the seats (UK moreso with the nationalist parties). Dunno about Slovenian politics, but the Swedish one looks appropriate as it has a multi-party system, and the Irish one should really just be limited to the four big ones.

In this case, PP and PSOE are shoo-ins, and I'll marginally include CiU, IU and UPyD. –HTD 06:20, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Spanish general election, 2008 shows six in the infobox. I would say the top 4 should certainly be included.--86.179.41.120 (talk) 09:14, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah that looks OK. That should satisfy (almost) everybody. –HTD 10:07, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

But top 4 what? The 2008 article includes the top 6 by proportion of the vote received (meaning we show one with 1 but are leaving out some 2 and 3) and we are currently doing that for the top 3 meaning we have the one with 11 but are leaving out the one with 16. But although the Spanish system is a proportional, it's has multiple seats so it doesn't always result in a perfectly proportional representation on a national level, in fact can sometimes be fairly far from it, which is clear in both the 2008 and 2011 elections. So our current system seems wrong to me. We should go by the number of deputies first, then only the proportion of the votes received since it's the number of deputies that matter in the end. (See New Zealand general election, 2005 for a slightly similar case.) In other words, if we go by top 4 we should have CiU and IU not UPyD. In fact, I don't think we should UPyD unless we also have Amaiur. (I don't see any harm in including UPyD but excluding EAJ/PNV as we have to cut somewhere and I'm not saying we should ignore the proportion of the vote received.) Nil Einne (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I propose to include the two or three major national parties and leave out the regional ones, because they have not competed everywhere and are not comparable to the national parties that have stood in all regions. I still favour two parties, because Spain traditionally has a two (dominant) party system. Therefore it is not very well comparable to Sweden, Slovenia or Ireland. Neither matchableness with other countries' infoboxes nor esthetics ("looks good") should decide here, both would be arbitrary. And we should try to make the infobox as clear as possible, not as complete as possible (bad example: Ireland with eight presidential candidates!). It can never be complete. In the end someone comes and says 'Hey, why don't we include Compromís-Q?' Let's keep it simple: PP+PSOE or, at most, PP+PSOE+IU. --RJFF (talk) 22:02, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the reason why I cited the United Kingdom example is because it has almost the same "political structure" with 2 dominant national parties, one "mid-major" national parties and several nationalist parties on some regions. What did the Brits do? Con, Lab and Lib Dem in tne infobox, although that's FPTP and not PR... but I don't see people arguing to include UKIP since they got plenty of votes, or DUP since they have the 4th most number of MPs.

As for aesthetics I'd actually prefer top 6 vs top 4 or 5 since with 4 parties the infobox will be to narrow unless someone puts up a map. With 5 one cell will be empty at least with 6 it'll look good. The max I'd go with six, and although I can't do anything if people would want 9 parties in the infobox, it'll look very horrendous, but people don't care so... –HTD 03:19, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

My opinion has nothing to do with matching. I do think we should consider how it has been handled in other cases, so we can consider why it was done that way and whether it works well and whether the same principles apply here. And I'm suggesting is is unclear and misleading when you put a party with fewer deputies in the infobox just because they are 'national'. I don't know, perhaps this is the norm in Spain in which case I guess we have to consider that but for those unfamiliar with the Spanish system I stick with my view it's unclear and misleading.

You can perhaps argue before the election it makes sense to only include 'national' parties or parties which have competed in most of the regions since only they can theoretically 'win' the election (i.e. get a majority in Congress), but after the election IMO we should go by the results and in any election the people elected are what matter most, not the percentage of the vote they received. (This is most obvious in FPTP elections.)

Besides that, if we want to talk theoretical I don't know enough about the Spanish system to be sure. but isn't it possible a party which doesn't compete in all regions (but obviously a fair number of them) would only get 30-35% of the vote but have a majority in congress whereas anoter party which competed in all the regions and received a greater percentage of the vote will be in the minority? I think we can all agree in that case at least the party with the majority is more significant then the party with the minority. A less theoretical example, in the 2008 election the 2 minor parties who had deputies in congress UPyD and IU were insufficient for a majority in Congress but the regional CIU could give the PSOE a majority in congress as could the regional EAJ/PNV combined with any other party represented in congress.

Anyway, in this case 6 would actually work well if we including PP, PSOE, IU, UPyD, CIU and Amaiur and two would also be okay particularly since PP has a majority anyway, but 3 if we including IU but not CU or 4 if we include UPyD but not CIU is IMO a bad idea. (Although interesting enough from Congress of Deputies (Spain) EAJ/PNV can form a group on their own in the Congress but UPyD and Amaiur can't.)

BTW, when comparing other countries, it's worth considering how well they compare. For example in the UK case the DU only have 1.2% of seats. In this case the CIU have 4.6% of seats. So while I'm not saying we have to include CIU, there's arguably less reason to include DU then there is CIU. (But on the other hand, theoretically the Conservatives could form the government with a number of the minor parties whereas since the PP have a majority that's not relevant here.)

Nil Einne (talk) 06:51, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Aesthetically, I'd prefer these, in order of preference: 2, 3, 6, 5, 4. 6 actually looks good. (See below:)

PP    PSOE   CIU
IU    Amaiur UPyD

If there's an issue on what the 6th party should be, leave it at 5.

Anything else more than 6 is bad. –HTD 14:30, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

The Irish infobox is a disaster area, why has that been allowed? doktorb _words^deeds 08:54, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. –HTD 14:30, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Why can't we just keep it with two: Spain traditionally has a two-party-system, there are two major national parties, all the others do not really have national importance. Even after the landslide defeat, PSOE has seven times more seats that C&U. The infobox has to simplify, it can never be complete. And restricting it to the two major parties is at least consequent. All other options are more or less arbitrary. --RJFF (talk) 15:50, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

+ one more argument: only PP and PSOE actually competed to win and lead the government, all other parties competed only to get into parliament: here is a clear cut to delimit parties to be included in the infobox. --RJFF (talk) 14:49, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

No. Other parties did compete to win and lead the government. Round these parts, i.e. Valencia City, the United Left posters feature Ricardo Six (their local candidate) plus Cayo Lara, stated on the posters to be their Prime Ministerial Candidate. You and I might think that those parties like United Left and UPyD have zero chance of having the next prime minister, but the fact remains that they stood on a national basis and had declared candidates for prime minister. Valenciano (talk) 02:10, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I must agree with RJFF. Even if some other parties did compete to win and lead the government, the infobox is supposed to simplify things, and none of these other parties did win a significant amount of seats. For more throughout data about the other parties we have the template boxes, otherwise we wouldn't need them. PP and PSOE together control around 85% of the seats, while nationalist parties (not competing for the premiership) together control around 11%. IU and UPyD, the remaining 2 parties which compete for the premiership, together control 4% of the seats. What's the point of having all of these in, when they add no information to the end result of the election? The Spanish system favours the two major parties, as well as the nationalist parties (which don't compete to win the premiership, anyway), thus making Spain an essentially two-party state. Impru20 (talk) 22:16, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Senate results please

Can someone please update the article with the results of the Senate elections - at present only the lower chamber results are included. The separate article on the Spanish Senate - which still talks of the 2009 results only - also needs updating. Rif Winfield (talk) 08:53, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Policies and manifestoes

There seems to be no information regarding the parties' stated aims, policies or manifestoes. Also, some analysis of the result in terms of current affairs would be appropriate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.158.69.42 (talk) 18:20, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

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