Madrid City Council election, 2015

Madrid City Council election, 2015

24 May 2015

All 57 seats in the Madrid City Council 29 seats needed for a majority Opinion polls Registered 2,386,104 3.4% Turnout 1,642,898 (68.9%) 1.7 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 10 20 6 Popular vote 563,292 519,210 249,152 Percentage 34.6% 31.8% 15.3% Swing 15.1 pp New party 8.6 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 7 5 6 Popular vote 186,059 29,823 27,869 Percentage 11.4% 1.8% 1.7% Swing 11.2 pp 6.1 pp 9.0 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 ballots—for 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:

• Mauricio Valiente, current assemblyman, representing the minority sectors in the last IU Regional Assembly
• Raquel López, current city councillor, representing the majority sectors.
• Eulalia Vaquero, current assembly women, representing sectors disengaged from the majority.

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.

Date	Polling Firm/Source	PP	PSOE	IU	UPyD	C's	P	AM	Oth.	Lead
24 May 2015	Municipal Election	34.6	15.3	1.7	1.8	11.4	w.AM	31.8	3.4	2.8
24 May	TNS-Demoscopia	31.9	15.5	2.0	1.5	10.8	w.AM	33.8	4.5	1.9
Exit polls
17 May	Idea Nomina Data[lower-alpha 1]	35.0	18.0	3.8	2.0	16.0	w.AM	23.5	1.7	11.5
13–14 May	Metroscopia	29.7	17.2	4.3	0.8	16.4	w.AM	27.8	3.8	1.9
13–14 May	NC-Report	35.2	20.1	4.1	2.8	16.2	w.AM	16.9	4.7	15.1
12–13 May	Sigma-2	36.4	19.2	4.6	1.6	14.7	w.AM	20.2	3.3	16.2
4–7 May	Sigma-2	36.9	20.3	3.6	1.3	16.1	w.AM	17.6	4.2	16.6
29 Apr–6 May	My Word	34.4	17.6	2.9	1.1	17.0	w.AM	21.6	5.4	12.8
3 May	JM&A	33.4	20.3	5.4	1.2	15.3	w.AM	20.5	3.9	12.9
27–28 Apr	Metroscopia	34.6	17.2	4.2	0.6	16.9	w.AM	24.3	2.2	10.3
27 Apr	Invymark	36.1	18.5	4.3	1.9	15.5	w.AM	17.3	6.4	17.6
23 Apr	CCM	35.3	18.5	6.7	1.4	11.8	w.AM	23.6	2.7	11.7
16–23 Apr	Deimos	37.6	26.1	4.3	2.3	14.8	w.AM	12.3	2.6	11.5
13–20 Apr	GAD3	34.5	21.2	4.6	1.1	15.6	w.AM	18.2	4.8	13.3
2–20 Apr	Encuestamos	32.9	22.1	4.7	0.8	14.8	w.AM	21.8	2.9	10.8
23 Mar–19 Apr	CIS	34.5	18.8	4.2	3.2	14.9	w.AM	20.8	3.6	13.7
14–16 Apr	Sigma-2	36.8	17.5	4.9	1.4	16.8	w.AM	18.6	4.0	18.2
3 Apr	PP	35.0	18.5	5.5	2.5	15.0	w.AM	21.5	2.0	13.5
25–26 Mar	Sigma-2	34.5	18.7	6.4	1.4	15.1	w.AM	21.2	2.7	13.3
19–20 Feb	Metroscopia	31.0	22.5	4.5	2.1	14.2	w.AM	21.9	3.8	8.5
12–13 Feb	Invymark	40.1	21.5	5.0	4.8	6.5	w.AM	14.9	7.2	18.6
11 Feb	Metroscopia	29.5	24.7	3.8	4.1	11.7	w.AM	22.6	3.6	4.8
26 Jan	Metroscopia	28.7	22.0	8.3	7.2	8.5	w.AM	18.6	5.7	6.7
2015
1–14 Nov	Sigma-2	31.4	19.5	6.8	7.7	4.3	24.6	Did not exist	5.7	6.8
5–11 Sep	GAD3	42.1	14.4	7.7	10.4	5.3	15.1		5.0	27.0
25 May 2014	EP Election	32.4	18.2	10.3	9.7	4.7	10.5		18.9	14.2
24–28 Apr	Metroscopia	32.5	23.4	20.8	11.6				11.7	9.1
21 Apr	Invymark	39.4	23.5	14.8	15.6				6.7	15.9
2014
13 May	Metroscopia	30.2	22.1	20.5	11.2				16.0	8.1
2013
9–13 Jan	GAD3	51.2	22.8	8.1	9.2				8.7	28.4
2012
20 Nov 2011	General Election	51.7	25.7	7.9	9.8				4.9	26.0
22 May 2011	Municipal Election	49.7	23.9	10.7	7.9	0.2			7.6	25.8

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.

29 seats needed for majority

Date	Polling Firm/Source	PP	PSOE	IU	UPyD	C's	P	AM	Others
24 May 2015	Municipal Election	21	9	0	0	7	w.AM	20	0
24 May	TNS-Demoscopia	19−22	9−10	0	0	6−7	w.AM	20−23	0
24 May	GAD3	21−23	9−10	0	0	7−8	w.AM	17−19	0
24 May	PP	20−21	8−10	0	0	6−7	w.AM	20−21	0
Exit polls
20 May	PP	21	11	3	0	9	w.AM	13	0
17 May	Idea Nomina Data	21−24	10−12	0	0	9−11	w.AM	14−15	0
13–14 May	Metroscopia	19	11	0	0	10	w.AM	17	0
13–14 May	NC-Report	23	13	0	0	10	w.AM	11	0
12–13 May	Sigma-2	22−24	12−13	0	0	9	w.AM	12−13	0
12 May	JM&A	22	12	0	0	10	w.AM	13	0
4–7 May	Sigma-2	23−25	12−13	0	0	10	w.AM	10−11	0
29 Apr–6 May	My Word	21−23	10−12	0−3	0	10−11	w.AM	13	0
3 May	JM&A	21	12	3	0	9	w.AM	12	0
27–28 Apr	Metroscopia	22	10	0	0	10	w.AM	15	0
27 Apr	Invymark	24	12	0	0	10	w.AM	11	0
23 Apr	CCM	21	11	4	0	7	w.AM	14	0
16–23 Apr	Deimos	24−25	16	0	0	8−9	w.AM	8−9	0
13–20 Apr	GAD3	21−23	13−14	0−3	0	9−10	w.AM	11−12	0
2–20 Apr	Encuestamos	19−22	13−15	0−3	0	8−9	w.AM	12−14	0
23 Mar–19 Apr	CIS	22−23	12	0	0	9−10	w.AM	13−14	0
14–16 Apr	Sigma-2	23−24	10−11	0−3	0	10	w.AM	11−12	0
25–26 Mar	Sigma-2	20−22	11	3−4	0	9	w.AM	12−13	0
19–20 Feb	Metroscopia	20	14	0	0	9	w.AM	14	0
18 Feb	PP	26−30	8−9	3	3−4	4−6	w.AM	9	0
12–13 Feb	Invymark	26	14	3	0	4	w.AM	10	0
11 Feb	Metroscopia	19	16	0	0	7	w.AM	15	0
5 Feb	PP	23	17	0	0	4	w.AM	13	0
26 Jan	Metroscopia	18	14	5	4	5	w.AM	11	0
2015
1–14 Nov	Sigma-2	20−21	12−13	4	4−5	0	15−16	Did not exist	0
31 Oct	Llorente & Cuenca	21−24	11−13	5−7	5−7	0	11−13		0
5–11 Sep	GAD3	26	9	4	6	3	9		0
25 May 2014	EP Election	(23)	(13)	(7)	(7)	(0)	(7)		(0)
24–28 Apr	Metroscopia	21	15	14	7	0	0		0
21 Apr	Invymark	25	14	9	9	0	0		0
2014
6 Jun	PSOE	25	10	11	9	0			2
13 May	Metroscopia	21	15	14	7	0			0
2013
9–13 Jan	GAD3	32−33	14−15	4−5	5−6				0
2012
20 Nov 2011	General Election	(32)	(15)	(4)	(6)				(0)
22 May 2011	Municipal Election	31	15	6	5	0			0

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	15.14	21	10
	Now Madrid (Ahora Madrid)	519,210	31.85	New	20	20
	Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)	249,152	15.28	8.65	9	6
	Citizens-Party of the Citizenry (C's)	186,059	11.41	11.22	7	7
	Union, Progress and Democracy (UPyD)	29,823	1.83	6.02	0	5
	United Left-The Greens (IU-LV)	27,869	1.71	9.04	0	6
	Vox (VOX)	9,843	0.60	New	0	±0
	Animalist Party Against Mistreatment of Animals (PACMA)	9,601	0.59	0.13	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

Parties with less than 0.1% of the vote		7,775	0.48	–	0	±0
	The National Coalition (LCN)	1,256	0.08	New	0	±0
	Communist Party of the Peoples of Spain (PCPE)	1,229	0.08	0.06	0	±0
	Humanist Party (PH)	1,034	0.06	0.07	0	±0
	Spanish Alternative (AES)	995	0.06	0.25	0	±0
	Multi-Cultural Party of Social Justice (MJS)	787	0.05	New	0	±0
	Individual Freedom Party (P-LIB)	618	0.04	New	0	±0
	Internationalist Solidarity and Self-Management (SAIn)	560	0.03	New	0	±0
	Internationalist Socialist Workers' Party (POSI)	535	0.03	0.04	0	±0
	Castilian Party-Communal Land (PCAS-TC)	484	0.03	0.03	0	±0
	Union for Leganés (ULEG)	277	0.02	0.05	0	±0

	Blank ballots	15,814	0.97	1.87
Total		1,630,350	100.00		57	±0
Valid votes		1,630,350	99.24	1.06
Invalid votes		12,548	0.76	1.06
Votes cast / turnout		1,642,898	68.85	1.63
Abstentions		743,206	31.15	1.63
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

1. "Madrid's Aguirre pleads for anti-Podemos pact". thelocal.es. 2015-05-27.
2. "Organic Law 5/1985, of 19 June, of the General Electoral Regime. Title III, Special Provisions for Municipal Elections.".
3. El País, 9 Sept. 2014, Madrid Mayor Ana Botella will not run in 2015 elections
4. http://vozpopuli.com/actualidad/58699-rajoy-prescinde-de-gonzalez-y-nombra-a-cifuentes-y-aguirre-para-comunidad-y-alcaldia-de-madrid
5. ElDiario.es, 6 Oct. 2014, Carmona será el candidato del PSOE a la alcaldía de Madrid sin primarias
6. "Raquel López, nueva candidata de IU a la Alcaldía de Madrid tras la marcha de Mauricio Valiente". RTVE.
7. "Esperanza Aguirre muddies the electoral debate accusing Manuela Carmena of syntony with ETA" (in Spanish). eldiario.es. 2015-05-19.
8. "Loving Carmena" (in Spanish). eldiario.es. 2015-05-20.
9. "Carmena's act overflows its capacity and requires the closing of a street" (in Spanish). Público. 2015-05-21.
10. "Much art in support of Manuela Carmena" (in Spanish). Cadena SER. 2015-05-18.
11. "If you don't vote PP, you vote ETA" (in Spanish). eldiario.es. 2015-05-19.
12. "Carmena supporters cast her face next to Esperanza Aguirre's home" (in Spanish). Público. 2015-05-20.
13. "A Carmena's act forces to close a street in the center of Madrid" (in Spanish). El País. 2015-05-21.