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But the latest opinion polls indicate he may not achieve an absolute majority, and will have to forge uncomfortable alliances with regional nationalist parties.

The Socialists have focussed their campaign recently on mobilizing their supporters, fearing a low turnout could give the conservatives a surprise win.

Election campaigning was suspended after a former municipal legislator, Isaias Carrasco, a Socialist, was shot dead Friday in the northern Basque region.

There have been no claims of responsibility, but police said it bore the hallmark of the Basque separatist group ETA, which has killed over 800 people in its nearly 40-year campaign for an independent homeland.

On Saturday, Spaniards received an emotional plea to turn out and vote from Carrasco's daughter, as hundreds attended his funeral.

"The images ... have provoked a natural feeling of sympathy for the Socialists and Zapatero," the centre-right El Mundo said in an editorial.

The centre-left El Pais commented: "Some are already beginning to put out the idea that a bigger Socialist win than predicted by the opinion polls will be due to the killing of Isaias Carrasco."

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Spain has a regional list system, with no nation-wide proportionality, and 50 multi-seat regions with (on average) only seven deputies each. Therefore, in most regions a vote for anyone other than the two main parties is a wasted vote. Other parties need a regional base to have much hope. All 50 regions are entitled to a minimum of 2 seats, plus 2 single seats for islands, with the remaining 248 seats apportioned according to population. Madrid has 35 seats, enabling the United Left to win two of them. IU's other 3 seats were won in various local alliances with regional left parties. Barcelona's 31 seats went:
PSOE/Catalan Socialist Party 14
CiU 6
PP 5
ERC 4
IU/Catalan Greens 2

In March 2007 the Equality Law modified the electoral law and introduced the "principle of balanced presence". Party electoral lists are required to have a minimum of 40% and a maximum of 60% of either sex among their candidates in general elections, starting with this one. The PSOE had an internal quota law already last time, so the result has been predicted to be the election of about five more conservative women this time. Zapatero’s administration was the first Spanish government to have the same number of female as male cabinet ministers (eight each). The Equality Law modifies 23 laws applicable in different spheres. Companies with more than 250 employees will have to negotiate plans to achieve gender equality, for example, by setting a goal for the company boards to be made up of at least 40 percent women within eight years.

[ 09 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by jrootham:
The current seat count is not a majority.

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Normally, the winner needs to court smaller parties in order to get the sufficient power in the ‘Congreso’ that will get it through a stable legislature. This support comes in the form of a so-called ‘pacto de legislatura’ (alliance in Parliament), the form of coalition governments so popular in many continental European countries being alien to Spanish political culture. In the 2004 elections the PSOE obtained 164 diputados against PP’s 147, which, added to the 8 diputados from ERC (radical Catalan nationalists) and 5 from IU (Left party), have allowed PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero to govern for the past four years.

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The Spanish are very flexible with their alliances. In Barcelona with 31 seats the left run three different tickets. But Barcelona has only four Senate seats, so there the left runs a single ticket, the Catalan Progressive Accord, which won 12 of Catalonia's 16 Senate seats.

[ 09 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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An Ipsos poll conducted for Spanish national television TVE gives Zapatero's party 45 percent of the vote, compared to 38.6 percent for the conservative Popular Party. A TNS Demoscopia exit poll for Spain's Antena 3 television puts Zapatero's Socialists ahead by 43.3 percent to the conservative's 38 percent.

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[ 09 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

While Zapatero's party is up 5 seats, its Catalan allies the ERC are down 5, and the farther-left IU are down 3. The core of the Left therefore has only 174 seats; a majority is 176. You could add the 2 Galician Nationalists, and maybe the 1 Navarro/Basque nationalist alliance, or maybe the 2 Canary Island centrists, but Reuters thinks the conservative Catalan nationalists may be the preferred partners:

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Political analysts expected the Socialists to do a deal with the Catalan party Convergencia i Unio (CiU), which has sided with Zapatero's minority government in many votes over the last four years. CiU was projected to win 10 seats on Sunday.

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A 1984 language census showed that of the 2.1 million people in the autonomous Basque Country, only 23 percent could understand Basque, only 21 percent could speak it, only 13 percent could read the language and only 10 percent could write it.

Rosa Diez might offer to save Zapatero from having to rely on the CiU. Stay tuned.

Spanish electoral law gives undue weight to small parties from autonomous regions. The Wall Street Journal laments how the Left was shortchanged:

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The United Left (IU), a Communist party with more than 1.2 million votes had five seats in Congress, while the Nationalist Basque Party (PNV), with just 420,000, held seven.

The Zapatero government's reliance on support from small pro-independence nationalist Basque and Catalan parties has resulted in pork-barreling and the adoption of legislation of dubious constitutionality. The bonds that hold Spain together have been weakened, which is illustrated in the latest devolution of power to Catalonia under the recently approved new Catalan regional statute law.

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[ 09 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
My impression is that a lot of traditional IU voters decided to cast tactical ballots for the PSOE.

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in order to govern effectively, Zapatero may need to forge awkward agreements with smaller regional parties.

Among the smaller parties eyeing alliances are the moderate nationalist Catalan Convergence and Unity Party (CiU), which won 11 seats, and the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which got six.

Both have strong regional agendas that they will want to see pushed in exchange for their support.

Zapatero said he favoured a "dialogue" with the PNV despite their differences.

Zapatero's first term required a thorny alliance with two leftist parties which only managed to win five seats between them on Sunday -- down from 13 in the last parliament.

"He will have to continue to rely on outside support, but it will clearly be different than the support he had in 2004," the left-wing daily El Pais said of Zapatero's alliance options.

But he will "have the opportunity to continue to apply the essential elements of his programme, especially relating to social and economic issues," it said.

Sociologist Ricardo Montoro said he believed Zapatero would "no difficulty" in negotiating alliances given his "huge ability" to get his reforms passed in the last legislature.

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Conversely, in Catalunya the left lost ground, dropping two seats while the conservative PP gained one and the conservative nationalist CiU gained one.

[ 11 March 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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The Basques already have the widest measure of self-government among Spain's 17 regions, with their own police force, the right to raise taxes and to teach their language in schools.

The Zapatero government enlarged the autonomy of six other regions during the previous legislature.

The Socialists, who did not win an absolute majority in Sunday's elections, are hoping to govern with the support of Ibarretxe's Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) and some other smaller party.

Ibarretxe was not expected to easily relinquish his referendum plan, which he described as remaining valid despite the PNV only taking 6 seats, one less than in 2004, in the Spanish parliament.

The PNV is, however, divided between Ibarretxe's separatist-minded and a more moderate current.

Basque regional Prime Minister Juan Jose Ibarretxe announced in 2007 that he would stage a regional referendum in October on the right of the 2.1 million Basques to decide their own future. The options are understood to include a self-government bordering on independence.

Ibarretxe believes that a referendum would help to end Spain's conflict of four decades with the militant Basque separatist group ETA, which has claimed more than 800 lives.

The Spanish government, however, regards the referendum as illegal and has vowed to block it.

Zapatero's new government, which has not yet been appointed, is now expected to try to defuse Ibarretxe's initiative by offering to enlarge the Basque region's autonomy within the limits imposed by the constitution.

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The more equality women will have, the more civilised and tolerant society will be. Not my words, but those of my new hero - the Spanish Prime Minister. Silvio Berlusconi called the new Spanish Cabinet “too pink”. Get used to it, Silvio. Even this most unreconstructed of male chauvinists has seen the point of making his own Cabinet at least a third female.

Meanwhile, nationalist parties from the Basque Country and Catalonia, which have been negotiating with the government on whether to support legislation over the next four years, all abstained on the first round of voting for prime minister, so Zapatero had to go to a second round where only a plurality is required. He won with only his 169 socialists voting for him. Of the 27 deputies from minor parties (originally eight minor parties, although the Republican Left and the United Left have formed a common parliamentary group), 23 abstained (maintaining their bargaining position for negotiations) while four joined the conservative PP in voting against Zapatero. Which four? One was Rosa María Díez González, the former socialist Euro MP who formed a new party based in the Basque country in opposition to Zapatero's willingness to cooperate with Basque nationalists; the UPyD stress individual rights and want to restrict the collective historical rights of the autonomous communities like the Basque nation. She complained of "the discrimination suffered by tens of thousands of families who are unable to educate their children in the Spanish language" because Basques learn in Basque at school. While claiming to be "progressive" she is more centralist than even the conservatives, and belongs with them.

Then the common group promptly split, the two United Left abstaining while the three Catalan Republican Left voted No. They said that, while not shutting any doors, they wanted to show their disappointment that Zapatero seemed reluctant to decentralize further, and seemed to be too co-operative with the conservatives and the centre-right Catalan CiU, although they remained convinced that they could agree on the social democratic agenda.

[ 19 April 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]